Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 4eb4d018f92ff1fe…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.7 KB
MD5: be8d4c29b72bc8f445649e6c3edde494 SHA-1: 7951dca130c956bc2e0364384a68519064db5ade SHA-256: 4eb4d018f92ff1fe57dea9cd13e97376a11571205e92f9f15f352b91e52d62e0
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution: Malicious File 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 an embedded script payload, indicating an attempt to execute malicious code upon opening. The embedded script likely downloads and executes a second-stage payload, though its exact functionality is obscured. The presence of XFA forms and the specific CVE exploit point towards a targeted attack leveraging known PDF vulnerabilities.

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
8e3c8fb25622fd8becb775f072d85fbe5ed3d11a005df7cfe651597b3d1ca1ed
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101362 bytes