Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 36a9e1d9332e87a3…

MALICIOUS

PDF

238.1 KB Created: 2017-11-17 15:32:18 Authoring application: Joomla! 1.5 - Open Source Content Management (via TCPDF 2.5.000_PHP4 (http://www.tcpdf.org))
MD5: 976b33ef83eab9d31d38380230637cf3 SHA-1: 4ae7fef9dcb93e553a87a3f08a13637ff9e2afd4 SHA-256: 36a9e1d9332e87a3393fa00b2bc778015d1be9999161d9c248a28cc057393805
60 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious File

The PDF contains an embedded script payload, as indicated by the PDF_EMBEDDED_SCRIPT_PAYLOAD heuristic and the ML_NYX_PDF_MALICIOUS classifier. The script is likely designed to download and execute a second-stage payload. The PDF_FROMCHARCODE heuristic suggests obfuscation techniques are in use within the script.

Machine Learning

  • Nyx PDF Classifier malicious score 0.9504

Heuristics 3

  • 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.
  • String.fromCharCode low PDF_FROMCHARCODE
    String.fromCharCode found — used to construct payload strings dynamically. Common in benign JavaScript libraries for codepoint manipulation, so this alone is informational; weaponised use is also caught by the dedicated fromCharCode-stage and exploit-shape rules.
  • Suspicious extracted artifact info EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
stream_002_off0000b783.bin
a5337ef1f5a0dfe4dc8fa6b4f3ef847a53624800b5928a0eeef5b888ceecaabc
decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0xB783 264072 bytes
embedded_pdf_script_0003a937.bin
3dcdfa3d8d6be3409d99dc766c98ef75f58375d380b457cd8e3624894ab66ced
pdf-embedded-script PDF decompressed stream script payload at offset 0x3A937 243782 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 1 eval/decoder/string-building token(s).