Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 aa333929e0c6a77c…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.6 KB
MD5: b8c1e9f308281075e38865a8f02e6ef6 SHA-1: 4d336e241884795cc5a2e9c5e0633d60fc3be799 SHA-256: aa333929e0c6a77c8d6c1f88bb1e74a91605206f548841ec953155e1e3aa0250
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The PDF file exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. The embedded script payload within the XFA form is indicative of malicious intent, likely to download and execute a second-stage payload. The presence of embedded URLs, though some are benign, suggests potential communication channels for the malware. The script itself is heavily obfuscated, making a precise determination of its actions difficult, but the exploit and script combination strongly points to a malicious PDF dropper.

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
94255922754f9e5e20228516dc9e53879fc34d03c0e0d3f9ece8ca4b24673c7f		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101235 bytes

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