Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b18442a3b448c04a…

MALICIOUS

PDF

79.8 KB
MD5: ed761ed1d793da13c68c9f46d60a3a9c SHA-1: 0afbfc4258317f8558c1063fc9fddc0c16a55aba SHA-256: b18442a3b448c04a1378fb6b8c4b75f0ec179e0168f77367b39d3eb85d57d693
138 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is a PDF document that exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms and LibTIFF processing. The heuristic firings indicate an embedded script payload within an XFA form, which is characteristic of exploit delivery. The script is likely responsible for downloading and executing a second-stage payload, although its exact functionality is obscured by obfuscation. The embedded file artifact further supports the payload delivery mechanism.

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
b698ee38052cfd5b97ca5282f0b4ffa7661964a414adcf7615c560b5cd42e858		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 81000 bytes

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