Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9a91034d7d7a6e31…

MALICIOUS

PDF

12.8 KB
MD5: 2c6e9f6b7041205eb1eb9b2652c1242a SHA-1: 21617fe4bc461c3f3922afc7a9308847b62c4f50 SHA-256: 9a91034d7d7a6e3102fc91ef11cf555e00d4133ec9dcb02bc405b99629a8cb76
190 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1059.001 PowerShell

The PDF file contains an embedded XFA form with executable script, triggering critical heuristics for CVE-2010-0188, an Adobe Reader LibTIFF exploit. This indicates the file is designed to exploit a vulnerability in the PDF reader to execute arbitrary code. The embedded script likely facilitates the download and execution of a second-stage payload.

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.
  • ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-6136306-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-6136306-0
  • 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.
  • 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://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-template/2.5/

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
embedded_pdf_script_00000384.bin
8d5bfaf14b15ff7444b6b40678c13b743f863087383714c5896d5e2bd11cfe68
pdf-embedded-script PDF raw stream script payload at offset 0x384 12312 bytes