Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 2bf240a0074adb34…

MALICIOUS

PDF

86.6 KB
MD5: c6b33bde7618aca99a9adfd96e5fbece SHA-1: a75ab1460a2656e2d97912528c74bb3bc50fb7f2 SHA-256: 2bf240a0074adb34a725cdf37056b7d6a9784f956fb80971fca1709871428c6d
196 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Malicious Link T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1566.002 Phishing: Spearphishing Link T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell

The sample is a PDF file that exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to LibTIFF XFA images. The PDF contains an embedded script payload, indicating it's designed to execute malicious code upon opening. The presence of XFA forms and embedded scripts strongly suggests a delivery mechanism for a secondary payload, likely exploiting this known vulnerability to achieve initial execution.

Heuristics 7

  • Adobe Reader LibTIFF XFA image exploit — CVE-2010-0188 critical CVE likely CVE_2010_0188
    PDF contains the CVE-2010-0188 exploit template: XFA JavaScript heap-spray setup, a generated TIFF image payload, and assignment of that TIFF data to an XFA image field rawValue to trigger Adobe Reader's LibTIFF parser.
  • XFA form contains executable script high CVE related PDF_XFA_SCRIPT
    PDF embeds an XFA form whose dataset contains a <script> or <xfa:script> block — XFA scripting has been the exploit primitive for several Adobe Reader RCEs (CVE-2010-0188 family, CVE-2018-4901, and others). Plain XFA without scripts is far less risky.
  • ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78
  • Embedded script payload in PDF stream medium PDF_EMBEDDED_SCRIPT_PAYLOAD
    PDF stream bytes contain an HTML/XFA <script> tag without accompanying Windows shell-execution primitives — common in accessible XFA forms but worth surfacing for analyst review.
  • Embedded file low PDF_EMBEDDED
    PDF embeds a file attachment — could carry an executable or another weaponised document as a nested payload
  • XFA form low PDF_XFA
    PDF uses XML Forms Architecture — can contain script logic
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL http://ns.adobe.com/xdp/
    • http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-template/2.5/
    • http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-data/1.0/

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
embedded_file_obj0008.bin
a11191e83e7b724420e4642122b04303b447227f624ebbc8d12dae7258494e7d
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 87914 bytes