Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c40c7b1e5029c6a0…

MALICIOUS

PDF

4.1 KB
MD5: 37ce03b4c95601ba667fa8c3a1fd51c3 SHA-1: a35bdd2febed12cfcb50b00c7e2a98518c1d796c SHA-256: c40c7b1e5029c6a040305f94185a6d920ab031a4f40e60cca3497ad4a59f3e2a
126 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1204.001 Malicious Link T1059.001 PowerShell T1059.003 Windows Command Shell

The PDF sample contains critical heuristic firings indicating the exploitation of CVE-2010-0188, a known vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to LibTIFF XFA images. This exploit is designed to execute arbitrary code upon opening the document. The presence of an embedded file and script payload further supports the malicious intent, likely for downloading and executing a second-stage payload. The ML classifier strongly confirms the malicious nature of the file.

Machine Learning

  • Nyx PDF Classifier malicious score 1.0000

Heuristics 4

  • 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.
  • 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

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
embedded_file_obj0008.bin
5615f39866246f89da9f863b7e85b95657d45b97bdc015c1efa6e0f893845b0d
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xEA 12823 bytes