Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a8227bfb1b663fcf…

MALICIOUS

PDF

43.9 KB Created: 2020-08-21 11:38:42 +03:00 Authoring application: wkhtmltopdf 0.12.5 (via Qt 4.8.7) First seen: 2026-05-09
MD5: b23d9b71fb84842eafeb12a42af239c8 SHA-1: d613f01fac885681a367320a2424055c4d997b47 SHA-256: a8227bfb1b663fcfb4597fef16b8fc04ca8c156037937ee183f153e1ae858b9a
214 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1566.002 Spearphishing Attachment T1204.002 Malicious Link

The PDF contains a high number of embedded links, many pointing to Shopify domains, but one critical link to 'ttraff.cc' is flagged as a malicious redirector. The document body, though heavily obfuscated, contains text related to a 'cosmetology test study guide' and the malicious URL, suggesting a lure for a phishing or scam campaign. The presence of numerous external PDF links also indicates a potential SEO poisoning or link farm tactic.

Machine Learning

  • Nyx PDF Classifier malicious score 1.0000

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • Callback phishing phone lure medium SE_CALLBACK_LURE
    Document asks the user to call a phone number in billing, refund, subscription, fraud, or security context — consistent with callback phishing or tech-support scam patterns. Suppressed for legitimate-issuer (IRS/gov/official-form) or Microsoft license-boilerplate documents that carry no urgency or charge/dispute escalation.
  • 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.cc/pify?keyword=illinois+cosmetology+test+study+guide In PDF document text
    • http://files.shortgoclothing.com/uploads/1/3/1/4/131407901/getovux.pdfIn PDF document text
    • http://files.eileenchai.studio/uploads/1/3/1/3/131380771/290363.pdfIn PDF document text
    • http://kixap.lunalili.com/uploads/1/3/1/3/131398125/guxupuvomoliw.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/1/0429/4259/5239/files/65220526564.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0430/8343/2096/files/patekit.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0428/9835/8432/files/669297692.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0430/0223/2983/files/7280302470.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0432/0998/2107/files/12181367079.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0431/6377/9221/files/arteritis_de_la_temporal_tratamiento.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0429/8797/8913/files/43742445894.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0429/6422/2101/files/tilat.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0431/4500/3169/files/64832627776.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0439/2399/6840/files/74399432459.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0448/4271/3249/files/nursing_interview_questions_answers_and_tips.pdfIn PDF document text
    • https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0435/7708/2019/files/43794473818.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

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
font_00_sfnt_off00006d0b.bin pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x6D0B 4992 bytes
SHA-256: 1e05b00b8b0ec4cb393799bbff104fa26f7ff7abf9144f98926b49161ef115ce
font_01_sfnt_off00007df4.bin pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x7DF4 10704 bytes
SHA-256: 0de19cd3ca30633e20ad0374fc6da833f3ce68c0c0ad0f6f66e7a58e1031b435