Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 91b9ea81cd86b8a2…

MALICIOUS

PDF

59.9 KB
MD5: 7efe9472170de2b3e396e80aebc22923 SHA-1: 8221c56f959c58ed92d0e2b738fe760be6b1b30f SHA-256: 91b9ea81cd86b8a26836c3056338905422b39ea3cd82f34b4be7c080f9026cce
256 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment

This PDF file exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to LibTIFF XFA image processing. The heuristic firings indicate the presence of an embedded script payload within an XFA form, which is designed to execute arbitrary code. The ClamAV detection further confirms its malicious nature as Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36830. The embedded script likely downloads and executes a second-stage payload.

Heuristics 8

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36830 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36830
  • ClamAV detection on extracted artifact critical EXTRACTED_FILE_CLAMAV
    ClamAV flagged at least one file extracted from inside this sample. Even when the wrapping document carries no AV detection of its own, a hit on the carved artifact is a strong indicator the sample is a delivery vehicle.
  • 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
48663f7797b06433818204eee7a22709551399f5d76093be7d64e20319ec5281
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 60555 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36830
Obfuscation or payload: unlikely