Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a5fe56e576b1e08e…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.7 KB
MD5: 7473b7ece527e10dec4b6f3f4e60687f SHA-1: ae6d24f654be34d47e0be2d2008504a44a85af30 SHA-256: a5fe56e576b1e08e7812a5c0b8ddd6c18562b57e96565a13703af195a09ce0b4
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: Malicious PDF T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell

The PDF file contains an embedded script payload and exploits CVE-2010-0188, a known vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. This indicates the file is designed to leverage this exploit to execute arbitrary code. The embedded script likely downloads and executes a second-stage payload, although the script content is heavily obfuscated and truncated, preventing a more detailed analysis of its specific actions. The presence of XFA forms and the specific CVE points to a malicious PDF designed for exploitation.

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
6d2d7bc82a00954f2d6cf899238a835e2c8aad8f79fcd79f1e8874f414d9c811		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101368 bytes

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