Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 44f78b7d7eab0d45…

MALICIOUS

PDF

12.6 KB
MD5: 3ea60f23b8d7984c483a051be6cc50f9 SHA-1: be0467b2d3e8639356be9c04e9b726f200837ae6 SHA-256: 44f78b7d7eab0d45c1577df12780998f3358448cafb78349f30ee3a449db169d
190 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1059.001 PowerShell

The PDF file contains an embedded XFA form that triggers the CVE-2010-0188 exploit in Adobe Reader. This exploit allows for arbitrary code execution. The embedded script payload, detected as Pdf.Exploit.Agent-6136306-0 by ClamAV, is likely responsible for downloading and executing a 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.Agent-6136306-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-6136306-0
  • 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.
  • XFA form low PDF_XFA
    PDF uses XML Forms Architecture — can contain script logic
  • 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.
  • 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://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-template/2.5/

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
embedded_pdf_script_00000359.bin
2b98d83bf1db1c84ece6861a8930345b73a054026d1e3515575ada21af5ae9ed
pdf-embedded-script PDF raw stream script payload at offset 0x359 12168 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 1 long base64-like blob(s).