Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 473c55689bea89bf…

MALICIOUS

PDF

50.7 KB
MD5: 67d305047def61940eda20cdf0bc0d9f SHA-1: 0233688c0c055acd71f347699d965496638e8921 SHA-256: 473c55689bea89bf8bf404b7f03bf44683e8a51806a6563e4e61ed683346ab98
196 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is a PDF file that leverages the CVE-2010-0188 vulnerability, a known exploit for Adobe Reader. Heuristics indicate an embedded script payload within an XFA form, which is a common delivery mechanism for exploits. ClamAV detection further confirms its malicious nature. The embedded file is likely the 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.
  • 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
81f73070dfce5e8578daf99c27207983218323bb5101fe6d80e6b2aea748a5fb		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC8 51163 bytes

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