Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 913a9685514198c9…

MALICIOUS

PDF

54.1 KB
MD5: c99a9aac44a3b08a4702fb71b299f8de SHA-1: 704ed3cd0809a814657f302df2828c6cee625b9c SHA-256: 913a9685514198c9d77db0a991d20ff405744feda83722661889cff8934c7405
248 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.001 PowerShell T1204.002 Malicious File T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment

This PDF document contains a high number of critical and high severity heuristic firings, including PDF_EVAL, PDF_UNESCAPE, PDF_EMBEDDED_SCRIPT_PAYLOAD, and PDF_XFA_SCRIPT, indicating the presence of executable JavaScript. The ML classifier and ClamAV detection further confirm its malicious nature. The embedded file 'embedded_file_obj0008.bin' is likely the dropped payload. The script's use of unescape and eval suggests obfuscation to hide its true intent, which is presumed to be downloading and executing a secondary payload.

Machine Learning

  • Nyx PDF Classifier malicious score 1.0000

Heuristics 9

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78
  • eval() call high PDF_EVAL
    eval() found — commonly used for obfuscated exploit execution
  • unescape() call high PDF_UNESCAPE
    unescape() found — often used to decode shellcode in PDF JS exploits
  • 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
  • Suspicious extracted artifact info EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.
  • 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
b91f11f72226b2c5ce42b3bdea9df180ee1089fcd56dcf9b3697a592420ce013
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC8 54618 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 2 eval/decoder/string-building token(s).