Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9a02e4e3cfb6ac56…

MALICIOUS

PDF

79.7 KB Created: 2012-06-11 17:19:01 Authoring application: %
MD5: 114665437755417dcaacc6c3174fab9e SHA-1: 4fff5fc0cded39b39976a5ee3873385fbb27ed43 SHA-256: 9a02e4e3cfb6ac5679020f387441253d82ccefd77617689188e8c54a92665ccd
140 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution: Malicious File T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment

The PDF file contains an embedded XFA form that exploits CVE-2010-0188 in Adobe Reader. This exploit is designed to execute a script payload, which is also embedded within the PDF. The primary attack vector is likely a user opening the malicious PDF, leading to the exploitation of the reader vulnerability and subsequent script execution.

Heuristics 8

  • 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
  • PDF differential parser failed info PDF_DIFFERENTIAL_PARSE_FAILED
    The cross-check parser (pdfminer.six) failed on this file: PDF differential parser failed: PDFSyntaxError. Static heuristics still ran and any of their findings above are valid; only the differential cross-check signal is missing.
  • Suspicious extracted artifact info EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.
  • 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_pdf_script_000005f1.bin
8b6b5d83cc73846a8795b0ba93183d1393daba83787f9baa16a3b1a29f78dc06
pdf-embedded-script PDF raw stream script payload at offset 0x5F1 80115 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 2 long base64-like blob(s).