Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 3ca41516fdcc8cc5…

MALICIOUS

PDF

5.1 KB Created: 2011-06-13 14:12:02 Authoring application: WmY
MD5: 9aaac3632785b798fe214273212d6fe5 SHA-1: 5e99be22249c94ad843e0e00820677251acf9b4d SHA-256: 3ca41516fdcc8cc5b3447c2f085e282c0543fdba5af7eccff121b7823b7e2ac2
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The PDF file contains a critical vulnerability exploit for CVE-2010-0188, targeting Adobe Reader. A decompressed JavaScript payload was extracted, indicating the likely execution of malicious code. The embedded script payload and the specific exploit identified strongly suggest this is a malicious document designed to compromise the user's system.

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.
  • unescape() call high PDF_UNESCAPE
    unescape() found — often used to decode shellcode in PDF JS exploits (matched inside decoded stream)
  • 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
  • PDF differential parser failed info PDF_DIFFERENTIAL_PARSE_FAILED
    The cross-check parser (pdfminer.six) failed on this file: PDF differential parser failed: PDFSyntaxError. Static heuristics still ran and any of their findings above are valid; only the differential cross-check signal is missing.
  • 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 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
stream_002_off0000031c.js
abc8fef0411d94259b14bc4f876719db65770020596e7f66676fd7f820e84bec
decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x31C 52424 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 1 eval/decoder/string-building token(s). Carved artifact contains 1 long base64-like blob(s).