Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 988e84df6580d1df…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.9 KB
MD5: b176ba46d79b2229510a5cbaa134fcb4 SHA-1: c0319bd3bcd49024c61e1f8c293d6f6d5c615385 SHA-256: 988e84df6580d1df2f51afa295cf3df65765c0d997e6c6affaddd9c1fe92832c
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 and LibTIFF. The heuristic firings indicate the presence of an embedded script payload within an XFA form, designed to leverage this exploit. The script likely downloads and executes a second-stage payload, although the exact nature of the payload is not discernible from the provided evidence. The embedded URLs are related to XFA schema and are not directly indicative of malicious activity.

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
5d18f962c8b3502c520cc7f441118b6c8652e720024b9adebab9312d4bd713bd		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101591 bytes

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