Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 996b190cfbc679e6…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.7 KB
MD5: 6d45c241f209d7d4d8328611cb7b771a SHA-1: d3d69770e5b58fbc2348d4a8478dcbeacfe21a4a SHA-256: 996b190cfbc679e6e11bf0a84a761da124ad0d3f7e11ecaddf4805855b13fe58
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 LibTIFF XFA images. The PDF contains an embedded script payload within an XFA form, indicating an attempt to execute malicious code upon opening. The embedded URLs are related to XFA schemas and Adobe, but their reputation is unknown or benign, suggesting they are not direct indicators of compromise.

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
22083961baa3f8e0112248a72058281f29a96dce1922ba1e109d8eb9bf84279a
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101314 bytes