Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 8e0c8cf178942c4b…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.8 KB
MD5: 53b2f364e969f7390a2f1ae15c3f3133 SHA-1: 43015801ab60731df7434d59989561fe41618e31 SHA-256: 8e0c8cf178942c4bdcdb09f73dd17e71f1f58c4236b0503725780faae2559df6
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution: Malicious PDF

The sample is a PDF file that exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. The PDF contains an embedded script payload within an XFA form, indicating an attempt to execute malicious code upon opening. The embedded script likely attempts to download and execute a second-stage payload, though the exact functionality is obscured. The presence of multiple XFA-related heuristics and the specific CVE firing strongly suggest this exploit vector.

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
52ea65993d74b6d18d46c017420941dcdacbb96ce947a3fe4d5389997b452de4		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101488 bytes

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