Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 baca468cadd2e3bc…

MALICIOUS

PDF

51.0 KB
MD5: 002605bbe81d5149318adba1d6c08cb0 SHA-1: eb6d45f3e3b5d7131cd010bb5b62dbed2a12df13 SHA-256: baca468cadd2e3bcb6c43acbf4420fd504a7a4dc66d86f423f6334d6bd37875a
196 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The PDF file contains an embedded script payload and triggers a critical heuristic for CVE-2010-0188, an Adobe Reader LibTIFF XFA image exploit. This indicates the file is designed to exploit this vulnerability for initial execution. The ClamAV detection further confirms its malicious nature. While no specific family is identified, the exploit and embedded script suggest a downloader or dropper functionality.

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.Agent-6136306-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-6136306-0
  • 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
b7d518bb4c753850fbb05c19011db9e454280d7b721831db287d4364cd30d53e
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC8 51477 bytes