Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a6987d72c44c16a0…

MALICIOUS

PDF

86.5 KB
MD5: 934dfc99eb150507dda88688c5aa1dc0 SHA-1: e98e091215ec1ba06cb5235f20da0063ded75ac4 SHA-256: a6987d72c44c16a018a3e389b036b7ab8944128c1a6cb8fc4eb1e69fea62abda
196 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: User Execution T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1204 User Execution

This PDF file exploits the CVE-2010-0188 vulnerability in Adobe Reader, specifically targeting XFA forms. The heuristic firings indicate the presence of an embedded script payload within an XFA form, designed to be executed upon opening the document. This exploit likely leads to the download and execution of a secondary malicious payload, as suggested by the ClamAV detection name 'Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78'.

Heuristics 7

  • 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-78 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78
  • 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
f0f111465568a17aedb0f20ff64242ecde79d91724f4ec8a6d196e430b207f69
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 87818 bytes