Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c470437afc542b31…

MALICIOUS

PDF

50.6 KB
MD5: f321cfeb72d4dfb93ed2c03813f747fc SHA-1: 029b2c33e3d26e06380b799b61b4100b28fd4230 SHA-256: c470437afc542b31e7d7a9d40e6db500d627f23b0f7f1a57b4a8fbb4582858b7
196 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File T1059.001 PowerShell

The PDF file contains an embedded script payload and exploits CVE-2010-0188, a known vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. This indicates the document is designed to deliver a malicious payload upon opening. The embedded file and XFA script firings further support this conclusion. The specific nature of the payload is not detailed, but the exploit mechanism is clear.

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
8e3d93608b40ca8c28af100b74bf965f4d49de3387556952ee0888218c7c2460
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC8 51051 bytes