Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 452c1b6719b4754c…

MALICIOUS

PDF

34.0 KB
MD5: d61153e781708c917debdd9a0fbd0ecd SHA-1: 5085859e61b1c7391b17ad57129bec4f67c232a0 SHA-256: 452c1b6719b4754cd70a2a512206b69391bb02815092723d4d282d5b5b25f872
256 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution T1566.002 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell

The sample is a PDF document that exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms and LibTIFF. The critical heuristic firings indicate that the PDF contains an embedded script payload within an XFA form, designed to trigger this exploit. This suggests the document is intended to deliver a second-stage payload upon opening in a vulnerable reader.

Heuristics 8

  • 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-36830 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36830
  • ClamAV detection on extracted artifact critical EXTRACTED_FILE_CLAMAV
    ClamAV flagged at least one file extracted from inside this sample. Even when the wrapping document carries no AV detection of its own, a hit on the carved artifact is a strong indicator the sample is a delivery vehicle.
  • 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
b9ed06c9a8230c60195bc75dd99d7dbe07588a8f4576b803e6ac55638d5c0b2c
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 34038 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36830
Obfuscation or payload: unlikely