Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 5773cf8aa953d588…

MALICIOUS

PDF

50.6 KB
MD5: a7c4d9a09922b09a6f81784dd5b2b123 SHA-1: 0ff4e7741127dee1f62f5a01c43679bffec3adcd SHA-256: 5773cf8aa953d5885fdbdd8c95cecff997fcde411a3c392176b49aab60a58bda
196 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.001 PowerShell

The PDF file contains an embedded script payload and exploits CVE-2010-0188, a known vulnerability in Adobe Reader's handling of XFA forms. This indicates the document is designed to deliver a secondary malicious payload. The embedded URLs, while not directly malicious, are related to XFA forms, suggesting the exploit targets this functionality. The ClamAV detection further confirms the malicious nature of the file.

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
e72d7e3169675af80c0acb78f204b0b61e31670bed2c164f743e27a3acf43c5a
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC8 51022 bytes