Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 8a1903be8264be42…

MALICIOUS

PDF

12.1 KB
MD5: 185af78927805a891a5e6f60a70a6691 SHA-1: c9daee1c7a497f604e07a518f755c97861e986af SHA-256: 8a1903be8264be42f13cd8a247982f05313fad9176d70cc46a17e566f21c3f61
226 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter T1059.007 Command and Scripting Interpreter: JavaScript

The PDF file contains XFA (XML Forms Architecture) which is known to be vulnerable to heap spray attacks. Heuristics indicate the presence of XFA heap spray exploit code and an embedded script payload. ClamAV detection confirms this as Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78, suggesting it's designed to drop a secondary malicious file. No specific family could be identified, but the attack pattern is consistent with exploit-based PDF delivery.

Machine Learning

  • Nyx PDF Classifier malicious score 1.0000

Heuristics 7

  • XFA form contains risky executable script high CVE related PDF_XFA_SCRIPT
    PDF embeds an XFA form whose script block contains exploit, submission/launch, or shell-execution primitives. Ordinary LiveCycle print/update scripts are left as generic XFA/JS signals unless stronger behavior is present.
  • XFA JavaScript heap-spray exploit code critical PDF_XFA_HEAP_SPRAY
    PDF contains XFA script content with heap-spray or shellcode-like JavaScript markers such as large encoded word sequences, util.pack, large arrays, or spray variable names. This is a weaponised Adobe Reader exploit pattern, not a normal interactive form.
  • 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
3d21e72ce6097d7a39835f04105b89e1feeefe3529dc0ca36ea6b1e0555f115f		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC8 11680 bytes

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