Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a4035f4ebbb6e84a…

MALICIOUS

PDF

5.8 KB Created: 2010-08-29 16:19:36 Authoring application: styeZek colSnap
MD5: 8f3596aef2117c8f392d7edd3c3e2600 SHA-1: c8af80caadd5c584c3db7a924058a6c443e54f59 SHA-256: a4035f4ebbb6e84a0e1eaf76632947bdcb29a94a560b55838cf698b8f331bc4e
246 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

This PDF document is malicious and exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. The heuristic firings indicate the presence of an embedded script payload and an XFA form containing executable script, which is characteristic of exploit documents. The ClamAV detection further confirms its malicious nature. The exploit likely leads to the download and execution of a second-stage payload.

Heuristics 10

  • 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-81 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-81
  • eval() call high PDF_EVAL
    eval() found — commonly used for obfuscated exploit execution
  • 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. (matched inside decoded stream)
  • 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/xci/1.0/
    • http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-template/2.5/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xtd/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xfdf/
    • http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-form/2.8/

Extracted artifacts 7

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
embedded_file_obj0008.bin
480a1e9a6934b7257e583f1b9b61f6fe39b0ff00ba2d3f0ad5b27bcdeb2f2d86
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xD7 133 bytes
embedded_file_obj0010.bin
d4ff871de6628873a7035e48c3dfa9affd8413c4e514b4f2b79a912efb0ddaf9
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 10 at offset 0x1A5 712 bytes
embedded_file_obj0011.bin
2289fcd9c9ae7bb3795d6dd42e0bfe5c4ca97b0c08978670fa62860c4c4b2b73
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 11 at offset 0x4B8 427 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 1 eval/decoder/string-building token(s).
embedded_file_obj0012.bin
103d1e7983cf88bfacedddb4af33ffb5317d9c2c8b3e1bfd987b2c5d712bc985
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 12 at offset 0x6AE 323 bytes
embedded_file_obj0014.bin
b44b3d22f22866ad2169c4d208799bbb06a35512345fb991db485061ee596cf5
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 14 at offset 0x84F 10449 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 1 eval/decoder/string-building token(s).
embedded_file_obj0015.bin
e6c26a3478346d27e841ad49868ebf68bf4c6863b6750e8d60bda3c4c6f79876
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 15 at offset 0x12D6 77 bytes
embedded_file_obj0016.bin
92a3ce61d783e15932b5de127ce45a9b4c2f98f4da2453f65241573c1dda808a
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 16 at offset 0x136A 56 bytes