Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a040a8a0a364cf98…

MALICIOUS

PDF

24.5 KB
MD5: 7a4f57537f759fd4acff8554a899509b SHA-1: dc78172aa0a607c9812d27bfe2a5771ce72f44cf SHA-256: a040a8a0a364cf98013138891fb1c63b0ab0608ba08901da8fcc9f1708af3b87
126 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

This PDF document exhibits malicious characteristics through the presence of XFA forms containing executable scripts, as indicated by the PDF_XFA_SCRIPT heuristic. The PDF_UNESCAPE and PDF_FROMCHARCODE heuristics suggest obfuscation techniques are being used to hide malicious code. Furthermore, an embedded file, 'embedded_file_obj0008.bin', was detected, which is often used to deliver secondary payloads. The combination of these factors points to an attack pattern involving exploitation of PDF viewer vulnerabilities to execute embedded code and potentially download further malicious content.

Heuristics 8

  • XFA form contains risky executable script high CVE related PDF_XFA_SCRIPT
    PDF embeds an XFA form whose script block contains exploit, submission/launch, or shell-execution primitives. Ordinary LiveCycle print/update scripts are left as generic XFA/JS signals unless stronger behavior is present.
  • unescape() call high PDF_UNESCAPE
    unescape() found — often used to decode shellcode in PDF JS exploits
  • 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
  • String.fromCharCode low PDF_FROMCHARCODE
    String.fromCharCode found — used to construct payload strings dynamically. Common in benign JavaScript libraries for codepoint manipulation, so this alone is informational; weaponised use is also caught by the dedicated fromCharCode-stage and exploit-shape rules.
  • 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_file_obj0008.bin
2ea04b7f7cfae1c37ad22baede05678da72bae6fa23e58a9ed950b897bd8bae7		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 24419 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 2 eval/decoder/string-building token(s).

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