Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 b9c6da6ea5d63330…

MALICIOUS

PDF

76.0 KB
MD5: ce3850ff45f2cd84d91ef68e42c769cc SHA-1: 8ee0bc589c9ee8ea8e74b26acff1c1fac6f9cd78 SHA-256: b9c6da6ea5d63330bdb4b25c29ff429908ef4812ee655d4e52c85776baeb80e1
196 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Malicious Link T1204.002 Malicious Link: Malicious File T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter T1059.007 Command and Scripting Interpreter: JavaScript

The sample is a PDF file that exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader's handling of XFA forms. The heuristic firings indicate the presence of an embedded script payload within an XFA form, which is characteristic of exploit documents designed to download and execute further malicious content. The ClamAV detection name 'Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78' further supports this assessment.

Heuristics 7

  • 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.
  • ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Dropped-78
  • 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
a087c62ba322785adc7453a4e863a98ff4a3a19bbc983c3b1c7deef0d8129353
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 77067 bytes