Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 4f4997b4d03f6904…

MALICIOUS

PDF

59.5 KB
MD5: ef4d74da72fedd42be4fa178ff16fea2 SHA-1: 22e06d766aab1474c2153b5f6d4ca25375820d24 SHA-256: 4f4997b4d03f6904ffbfdb1fdbd44ddc5092a51a212f4818677f90baddb8488b
198 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment

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 script is heavily obfuscated, but its structure suggests it is designed to download and execute a 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-36830 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36830
  • 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
cc0aa4a349ac5b30c6d2826ace781237ab4ea9719cc88f67851c1d241397c8ab
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 60222 bytes