Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 99290832ea3d774b…

MALICIOUS

PDF

50.6 KB
MD5: 9384a3910fa0123be8d53a0bbf2fe555 SHA-1: 1201491d853128c67f2afa0a0c65e91861512736 SHA-256: 99290832ea3d774bd96832b0da087de8e5989555637bc2d7404a20282fe0151c
196 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell T1059.003 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Windows Command Shell

The sample is a PDF document that exploits CVE-2010-0188, a known vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. The critical heuristic firings indicate that the PDF contains an embedded script payload designed to be executed by the vulnerable reader. This exploit likely leads to the download and execution of a secondary malicious payload, as suggested by the ClamAV detection name 'Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78'.

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
e510ed71f99058b5b77b44a8383dab90f8566e7c4174a687d05ebf5fb06acfc1
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC8 51076 bytes