Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 46ae1a250d0b5981…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.9 KB
MD5: 7a50b6f88b3cbfcd4591ccb8d4ca18d6 SHA-1: ec1a27bbb77720a4ba48552403f42d384f4bed53 SHA-256: 46ae1a250d0b598189a4313ed4395df04ff0a53431f546ec9814f9a851d559f0
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution 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. The PDF contains embedded script payloads designed to leverage this exploit. The embedded URLs, while not directly malicious, are associated with XFA forms, further supporting the exploit vector. The primary attack pattern involves tricking the user into opening a malicious PDF that exploits a known vulnerability to gain code execution.

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
9afaa85ed249ac71893af24987e8950e2e2601dbefa69d6209d1a82eaad51917		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101583 bytes

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