Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 52a92d5706610a4f…

MALICIOUS

PDF

76.1 KB
MD5: d28bd7f65a7e498b4ab546b25d7d57c8 SHA-1: 777fa167b71422d9813858834da08e93d5d7a048 SHA-256: 52a92d5706610a4fec2bccef3f63cfa3bcf84c11f0ec610461f5879acf4152dd
196 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The PDF file exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. This exploit allows for arbitrary code execution, indicated by the critical heuristic firing for this CVE and the detection as Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78 by ClamAV. The presence of embedded scripts and an embedded file further supports the malicious nature of the document, likely serving as a dropper for further malicious activity.

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.Dropped-78 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78
  • 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
fdda77ee09446a3446f1d0c9ed2d26edd96c6a91f4af3da951f88ca3e305de87
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 77207 bytes