Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3a8e8e6d413a6c9f…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.9 KB
MD5: 24230d9f70927c148864170fae0bbea1 SHA-1: 33ef6c97a0430ab9673f7a34d63d0cbf65eedcb6 SHA-256: 3a8e8e6d413a6c9f8d2a4fb5c30f60101277e15ecedb50881915f313b657f0e9
138 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution: Malicious File 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 XFA forms. The PDF contains embedded script payloads, indicating an attempt to execute malicious code upon opening. The embedded script is likely responsible for downloading and executing a second-stage payload, though its exact functionality is obscured by obfuscation. The presence of XFA forms and the specific CVE points to a targeted exploit delivery.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • 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
778dcaabeffcf775f064754f2eb958aeed03696ca288edbed25cb8fd38bb31ca		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101513 bytes

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