Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 488a40ea14641a3c…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.9 KB
MD5: 4f4372d50cc953ce0f43263ce9778758 SHA-1: 18e4d7e6c8a0187e460e2323c4fc0ba83c1ddb1d SHA-256: 488a40ea14641a3c90f42353368b5a2b26d61b4d1d936c9a3847182d3a3666d6
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The PDF file exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to LibTIFF XFA image processing. This exploit allows for arbitrary code execution. The presence of XFA forms and embedded script payloads further indicates malicious intent. The embedded URLs, while not directly malicious, are part of the XFA structure.

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
58277ec7ef08f9e6e92f7bfb3c129378063dc6614d745378a4f363d0948eec12
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101529 bytes