Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 52a9412ffc210beb…

MALICIOUS

PDF

78.8 KB
MD5: b391c01f304e763901d76f7e31689a75 SHA-1: 0864cfcd9de8301a57a977cbc0d0dcaa9a7e721a SHA-256: 52a9412ffc210beb0b0e0bf11f74d8146de3b4e5cb8736a5054ff8c98cb1692c
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: Malicious PDF T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell T1204 User Execution: Malicious File

The PDF file contains embedded XFA forms and triggers a critical heuristic for CVE-2010-0188, indicating exploitation of Adobe Reader. The presence of embedded script payloads within XFA forms suggests an attempt to download and execute a secondary payload. While specific family attribution is not possible, the exploit and embedded script point to a malicious PDF designed for initial compromise.

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
30126cd5f8b8250eac6e1ab1e8daf1e180eea56ca1e0cabf983fc38c4ef3b90c		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 79920 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.