Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 a90163b802269bf1…

MALICIOUS

PDF

5.4 KB Created: sdtres
MD5: 1908f30a4dd7c1da1ff3eade62891a25 SHA-1: 897a8fdeae205b2ebf7e22cc58adf787b2046f0b SHA-256: a90163b802269bf1d003516a1fa6964f53588c1304ab6c11fa51bade509cb9b2
258 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1059.001 PowerShell

The PDF file exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader's handling of LibTIFF XFA images. This exploit is designed to execute arbitrary code, likely to download and run a second-stage payload. The embedded artifact 'embedded_file_obj0011.bin' was also flagged by ClamAV for the same exploit.

Heuristics 8

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.CVE_2010_0188-10 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.CVE_2010_0188-10
  • ClamAV detection on extracted artifact critical EXTRACTED_FILE_CLAMAV
    ClamAV flagged at least one file extracted from inside this sample. Even when the wrapping document carries no AV detection of its own, a hit on the carved artifact is a strong indicator the sample is a delivery vehicle.
  • unescape() call high PDF_UNESCAPE
    unescape() found — often used to decode shellcode in PDF JS exploits (matched inside decoded stream)
  • 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
  • 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.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
embedded_file_obj0011.bin
56306218e4fddef3b108aeab7844810725ac9cca111059b57e0f26ead2ac7152
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 11 at offset 0x432 32616 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.CVE_2010_0188-10
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 1 eval/decoder/string-building token(s).