Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 989f4124741325b2…

MALICIOUS

PDF

50.8 KB
MD5: 9943add4c8593e89f505c05e6ecbc209 SHA-1: 1198f96ee542c423e138c5c16771f1e3b8d08f36 SHA-256: 989f4124741325b25e7b5839253b59105f79eea1ec2b70e65632e6cac507d04b
196 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is a PDF document that exploits CVE-2010-0188, a known vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. The heuristic firings indicate an embedded script payload within an XFA form, which is characteristic of exploit documents designed to download and execute further stages. The ClamAV detection name 'Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78' further supports this. No specific family could be identified, but the attack pattern is consistent with exploit delivery.

Heuristics 7

  • 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.Dropped-78 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78
  • 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
8b570dc80062575a966a0ffab7658db280b3a064265f70443d54becef06bd96c		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC8 51244 bytes

Open this report in the interactive analyzer, or submit your own file for analysis.