Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 ad4eb412fcf1b09b…

MALICIOUS

PDF

12.9 KB
MD5: bb8651f984d802ce49f84db9a00e2984 SHA-1: 21ce3c4d7921e7f98cc86a3eb8b5ab70f3ee01e3 SHA-256: ad4eb412fcf1b09bba083d1d768d645b3da2e5251950f2f0a76aa222d29d10d4
272 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The PDF file contains critical heuristic firings indicating it exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader's handling of XFA forms and LibTIFF. This exploit is designed to achieve arbitrary code execution on the victim's machine. No document body text was available for analysis, but the presence of XFA heap-spray exploit code and embedded script payloads strongly suggests a malicious intent to compromise the user.

Heuristics 10

  • 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.
  • XFA JavaScript heap-spray exploit code critical PDF_XFA_HEAP_SPRAY
    PDF contains XFA script content with heap-spray or shellcode-like JavaScript markers such as large encoded word sequences, util.pack, large arrays, or spray variable names. This is a weaponised Adobe Reader exploit pattern, not a normal interactive form.
  • ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36755 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36755
  • 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.
  • JavaScript action low PDF_JAVASCRIPT
    PDF contains a /JavaScript action. Generic JavaScript is common in benign forms; specific dangerous APIs are scored by separate rules.
  • Embedded JS stream low PDF_JS
    PDF references a /JS stream. Generic JavaScript is common in benign forms; specific dangerous APIs are scored by separate rules.
  • XFA form low PDF_XFA
    PDF uses XML Forms Architecture — can contain script logic
  • AcroForm button with action trigger low PDF_ACROFORM_BUTTON
    PDF contains a /Btn form field together with a SubmitForm/URI/Launch/JS trigger — this is the building block of fake 'Download' or 'Open' button overlays used in PDF phishing lures
  • 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_pdf_script_000003e2.bin
26b03b4623f8ada24778455db277f7d5d1f4e4e7981af98f2e6366cb00d4bf0f
pdf-embedded-script PDF raw stream script payload at offset 0x3E2 12215 bytes