Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 4c2c01e38db299cc…

MALICIOUS

PDF

5.8 KB Created: 2010-08-29 16:19:36 Authoring application: styeZek colSnap
MD5: b72b895a0a14a753c802ed9d8ebcba67 SHA-1: be4f55edd6f64bb69fa75464316a142711639f03 SHA-256: 4c2c01e38db299cc5b693dab05f17f7cb379f11c2086816274aa4f68c5e6af4e
246 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.001 PowerShell

This PDF document exploits the CVE-2010-0188 vulnerability in Adobe Reader, leveraging XFA forms and JavaScript to achieve code execution. The embedded script payload and the critical heuristic firing for CVE-2010-0188 strongly indicate an exploit designed to download and execute a secondary payload. The presence of multiple embedded files further supports this, suggesting a dropper or downloader functionality.

Heuristics 10

  • 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.Dropped-81 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-81
  • eval() call high PDF_EVAL
    eval() found — commonly used for obfuscated exploit execution
  • 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
  • String.fromCharCode low PDF_FROMCHARCODE
    String.fromCharCode found — used to construct payload strings dynamically. Common in benign JavaScript libraries for codepoint manipulation, so this alone is informational; weaponised use is also caught by the dedicated fromCharCode-stage and exploit-shape rules. (matched inside decoded stream)
  • Suspicious extracted artifact info EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.
  • 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/xci/1.0/
    • http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-template/2.5/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xtd/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xfdf/
    • http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-form/2.8/

Extracted artifacts 7

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
embedded_file_obj0008.bin
480a1e9a6934b7257e583f1b9b61f6fe39b0ff00ba2d3f0ad5b27bcdeb2f2d86
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xD7 133 bytes
embedded_file_obj0010.bin
d4ff871de6628873a7035e48c3dfa9affd8413c4e514b4f2b79a912efb0ddaf9
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 10 at offset 0x1A5 712 bytes
embedded_file_obj0011.bin
e29884e431074bbce673b4c9a56da9acd6b8cc2722b6a6c1184bfc14f37671e5
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 11 at offset 0x4B8 424 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 1 eval/decoder/string-building token(s).
embedded_file_obj0012.bin
103d1e7983cf88bfacedddb4af33ffb5317d9c2c8b3e1bfd987b2c5d712bc985
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 12 at offset 0x6AB 323 bytes
embedded_file_obj0014.bin
f3872bbaffec9f553c10ec4057b2f161b7fde7907816a137b1d1678dc80fe674
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 14 at offset 0x84C 10306 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 1 eval/decoder/string-building token(s).
embedded_file_obj0015.bin
e6c26a3478346d27e841ad49868ebf68bf4c6863b6750e8d60bda3c4c6f79876
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 15 at offset 0x12BF 77 bytes
embedded_file_obj0016.bin
92a3ce61d783e15932b5de127ce45a9b4c2f98f4da2453f65241573c1dda808a
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 16 at offset 0x1353 56 bytes