Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a7ae90b0dd677be3…

MALICIOUS

PDF

43.8 KB Created: 2020-08-20 08:01:26 +03:00 Authoring application: wkhtmltopdf 0.12.5 (via Qt 4.8.7) First seen: 2026-05-09
MD5: 9b0b8d83a0f0cad84ec142ef526578e4 SHA-1: f83e4b0de0dfae4ffdedffc4650ff9f97037a5ac SHA-256: a7ae90b0dd677be3469f82e6034757f9a4f124a32e7872362f701e00bdcf24d3
194 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment T1059.001 PowerShell

The PDF contains embedded links that redirect to a malicious domain, identified by the PDF_MALICIOUS_REDIRECTOR_LINK heuristic. The document body, though heavily obfuscated, contains text related to 'Metro newspaper crossword answers uk', suggesting a lure. The PDF_SEO_LINK_FARM heuristic indicates a large number of outbound links, many pointing to Shopify domains, likely to improve search engine ranking for the malicious content. The ML_NYX_PDF_MALICIOUS classifier strongly indicates malicious intent.

Machine Learning

  • Nyx PDF Classifier malicious score 1.0000

Heuristics 5

  • PDF links to known malicious redirector infrastructure critical PDF_MALICIOUS_REDIRECTOR_LINK
    PDF contains a clickable URI to redirector infrastructure used by a known malicious PDF SEO/adware delivery campaign. These documents typically rely on user interaction and redirect chains rather than a PDF parser vulnerability.
  • Small PDF contains mass external PDF link farm critical PDF_SEO_LINK_FARM
    Small PDF contains many clickable external PDF links, mostly clustered on one host. This matches generated SEO/link-farm PDF carriers used to route users into malicious or unwanted-software delivery chains, rather than a normal document citation pattern.
  • Image lure linking to an SEO redirector (free-download phishing) high PDF_SEO_UTM_REDIRECTOR_LINK
    PDF embeds an image with little or no body text and a clickable link to a multi-word utm_term / FeedBurner-proxied SEO redirector — the 'free ebook / solution-manual / document download' phishing family that ranks for natural-language search queries and routes the user into a payload/redirect chain. The PDF carries no exploit; the risk is the linked destination. Flagged structurally (image lure + SEO redirector) so it does not depend on a ClamAV/ML signature, and regardless of how many filler text pages the lure carries.
  • Object number defined twice with different bodies info PDF_DUPLICATE_OBJ_BODY_INCREMENTAL
    The same indirect object (N G) is defined more than once with different body bytes. First-wins and last-wins readers will resolve different content, which is a parser-confusion shape used by targeted PDFs. Body-only differences are common in benign incremental updates, so severity is raised only when the duplicate carries active content.
  • 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 https://ttraff.com/pify?keyword=metro+newspaper+crossword+answers+uk In PDF document text
    • http://files.carriagehousecinema.org/uploads/1/3/1/1/131164556/342c490c.pdfIn PDF document text
    • http://www.ascendercorp.com/In PDF document text
    • http://www.ascendercorp.com/typedesigners.htmlIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0438/1471/5549/files/61580274187.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0427/8150/7740/files/12281442521.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0435/8379/9459/files/7456099224.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0437/8004/7010/files/jipimutaripat.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0435/5201/4495/files/40576987398.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0431/1498/7669/files/addendum_to_will_form_free.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0429/9030/5443/files/canon_sl2_user_manual.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0436/0034/7299/files/pukabuwe.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0427/9199/3500/files/28673597238.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0455/6567/3637/files/shri_rudram_chamakam_kannada.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0436/5336/5910/files/kaxilu.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0427/6443/5612/files/ruwered.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0429/1140/0102/files/drudge_report_rss.pdfIn PDF document text
    • http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#In PDF document text
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/In PDF document text
    • http://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/In PDF document text
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/In PDF document text
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/In PDF document text
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/rights/In PDF document text
    • http://scripts.sil.org/OFLIn PDF document text

Related samples 7

Ranked by shared artifacts, heuristics, extracted URLs, CVEs, and signatures.

Full JSON: related samples API

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
font_00_sfnt_off00006d7e.bin pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x6D7E 5196 bytes
SHA-256: b6bd49dda48245f1c7275667896d32333d9af47448cc100748609886d8cdb6f8
font_01_sfnt_off00007f4d.bin pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x7F4D 10340 bytes
SHA-256: ad83c016f6bc8dc6eaa115c94296090b9dc4a9e0b3ed7b8e6d4d257632cde8be

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