Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9837cf35af180aec…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.8 KB
MD5: 3e7dbeafc61fd7a4d30549bf1b3b58b1 SHA-1: d309ae61113129664f642dcebb0e028f8c163dfe SHA-256: 9837cf35af180aeca794048d99df25e81df5dc9dbcdc146c2f4d9d2419790b8d
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is a PDF file that exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. The critical heuristic firing indicates this exploit is present and likely used to execute arbitrary code. The PDF also contains embedded script payloads, suggesting a downloader or dropper functionality. While no specific family is identified, the exploit and embedded script point to a malicious intent to compromise the user's system.

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
1a127bff0ba64b97f0b87346f0900a0fc1757280fce2d872313f05910b60f1f2		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101425 bytes

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