C6 Messenger Downloader — PDF malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 65a8cba45d675bf3…

MALICIOUS

PDF

314.9 KB Created: 2011-04-27 03:30:11 Authoring application: Joomla! 1.5 - Open Source Content Management (via TCPDF 3.0.015 (http://www.tcpdf.org))
MD5: e69e731f9cead011cdaf9ed7c109db6f SHA-1: 0faa0e72aba3f540e2cb7ee3b08f999e8fcc5c17 SHA-256: 65a8cba45d675bf31fc020abb0c79d7e78758062de9b32aef66401c8d22d7cde
92 Risk Score

Malware Insights

C6 Messenger Downloader · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

The sample is a PDF file identified as malicious by an ML classifier and contains a known exploit (CVE_2008_2551) for the C6 Messenger Downloader. This exploit is designed to download and execute a second-stage payload, indicated by the embedded URL pointing to 'system.exe'. The presence of the exploit and the executable download URL strongly suggest a downloader attack pattern.

Machine Learning

  • Nyx PDF Classifier malicious score 0.9529

Heuristics 2

  • C6 Messenger DownloaderActiveX exploit critical CVE exact CVE_2008_2551
    PDF stream bytes contain HTML/ActiveX content configuring the vulnerable C6 Messenger DownloaderActiveX control with propDownloadUrl and propPostDownloadAction=run. This is the published exploit shape for CVE-2008-2551.
  • 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://artisanballoonz.com/system/system.exe
    • http://c6.community.alice.it/download/DownloaderActiveX.cab#Version=1,0,0,1

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
stream_002_off00000810.bin
80ce46be3b4d5733393d911e720cc341eac961413bc8841086c1643fee9fc14b
decompressed-pdf-stream PDF FlateDecoded stream at offset 0x810 73272 bytes