Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 401abc1c21f1bd9d…

MALICIOUS

PDF

84.4 KB
MD5: c60229282410e8694d76f2097fccaf53 SHA-1: 1cc719e1d42a4f8218be467fc2e5941ac6655386 SHA-256: 401abc1c21f1bd9d1aff8ec21494c5cb45891daa7bad0bc777363ec4a282d42f
196 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The PDF file exploits CVE-2010-0188, a known vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. The embedded script payload and XFA form heuristics indicate that the document is designed to trigger this exploit. The ClamAV detection further confirms its malicious nature. The embedded file is likely the second-stage payload.

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-93 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-93
  • 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
d113a9e2e316553c21ec5a352b0983290153b6399b157afc1dbf966ea5557f8a
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 85674 bytes