Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 40e9fcc572b90e9d…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.8 KB
MD5: d4c3512348db808f75cc29aa99a26224 SHA-1: 436e1fd96c18e331d12c8139b5c64ba33667f479 SHA-256: 40e9fcc572b90e9d48aeac13631362b7672d52689537bb11a00bc1af0a462dee
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: Malicious PDF T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell

The sample is a PDF file that exploits CVE-2010-0188, a known vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to LibTIFF XFA image parsing. The heuristic firings indicate an embedded script payload within an XFA form, which is characteristic of exploit documents designed to achieve arbitrary code execution. The script likely downloads and executes a secondary payload, though its exact functionality is obscured. The embedded URLs are related to XFA schemas and are not directly indicative of malicious activity.

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
48682f7a682754cfe9f7fa1636f0ebec5c3ffc1efbf32e7aaa91e52f6071e815		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101422 bytes

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