Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b929e4f104d131e8…

MALICIOUS

PDF

39.8 KB
MD5: 9cb5f6637e423585983f92628f7c0690 SHA-1: 7f4c20a04bb1502003efd096e4eb348087fb94e9 SHA-256: b929e4f104d131e8d041ecdf3aef4b0ea2c7bc54a96e94150ee0469813e04f4b
178 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The PDF file exploits CVE-2010-0188, a known vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to LibTIFF XFA image processing. The presence of XFA forms and eval() calls indicates the execution of embedded scripts. These scripts are likely responsible for downloading and executing a second-stage payload, leveraging the exploit to achieve arbitrary code execution.

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.
  • 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.
  • eval() call high PDF_EVAL
    eval() found — commonly used for obfuscated exploit execution
  • 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.
  • 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/xci/1.0/
    • http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-template/2.5/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xtd/
    • http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-data/1.0/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xfdf/
    • http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-form/2.8/

Extracted artifacts 7

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
embedded_file_obj0008.bin
04462f810d6eacdacecc9d0a5f3f81bebc722af4415e04da19b520338f642b51
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xD7 67 bytes
embedded_file_obj0009.bin
5c22d8a763a73b763d2ab66d21a4f9cd8f141b27bb1e81aff272c9870dc6327b
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 9 at offset 0x162 677 bytes
embedded_file_obj0010.bin
c8d1e5d9e8f23ed8143683c5c2e616b10c60ca116f935aac77ad7d6c8369f839
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 10 at offset 0x452 224 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: No threats found
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 1 eval/decoder/string-building token(s).
embedded_file_obj0011.bin
5a16ce11e404a5c8e9b468d257cbe8abc0205e611540e8c2c975266f0ca7feb1
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 11 at offset 0x57D 37943 bytes
embedded_file_obj0012.bin
6dfc2cfc739bf5cd5514e048143c782a1af7b4c86ed10bd88203471efa9b3fe7
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 12 at offset 0x99FF 389 bytes
embedded_file_obj0014.bin
9f69c42e66b0c1666412737dc9cf4aa42379ee793c4ad8d07130781756ea33d5
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 14 at offset 0x9BD1 65 bytes
embedded_file_obj0015.bin
51d6d76eddb1746e412f89f4d1c1b0d620c60fb4a5641c018e93871be63968a9
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 15 at offset 0x9C5C 147 bytes