Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 46cd1eceeb59d368…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.7 KB
MD5: f40b51c24f86a5608c72da949d353cc4 SHA-1: cef362a648e69884bb016cfc98b92eba484e9a75 SHA-256: 46cd1eceeb59d368c3859589ce9bcc10baafa67ebaf24a495d0ffeee4b2335d3
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

This PDF file exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. The heuristic firings indicate the presence of an embedded script payload within an XFA form, designed to leverage this exploit. The embedded file and script suggest the PDF is a dropper for further 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
ce3bda948e47f32fd0d09201b316e958ee006cb26af38b2bbf4c3cd07fc20b7a
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101315 bytes