Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 52c0a9230bd1b358…

MALICIOUS

PDF

78.9 KB
MD5: 05e37845783f805ae127cfa7bd5624bb SHA-1: 0548c8327200b2c77efa85d81ac49f714c7db836 SHA-256: 52c0a9230bd1b35822bbdcb521640d722283eee8ad911c2c26c344f3de91abd8
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution: Malicious File T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell T1059.003 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Windows Command Shell T1059.007 Command and Scripting Interpreter: JavaScript T1059.004 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Python

This PDF document exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader's handling of XFA forms and LibTIFF images. The heuristic firings indicate the presence of an embedded script payload within an XFA form, designed to be executed upon opening the document. This exploit likely serves as a dropper for further malicious activity, such as downloading and executing a secondary payload. No specific family could be identified, but the exploit vector is clear.

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
2ac34afdce91e3427cd17fdf33850b39e3957b68038b8ed67fd193cdc2e4b8c6		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 80092 bytes

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