Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c5698f7a4c3172df…

MALICIOUS

PDF

59.8 KB
MD5: 05c976538cec6fc49bd741dab8477b26 SHA-1: 079f535f76fe9c2bdc00fb96da8b2a5802a219aa SHA-256: c5698f7a4c3172dfdacb8c1ed4d8d5ad1b0b34cacf9d46acc91164b8ecf02a4c
256 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 related to XFA forms and LibTIFF. The PDF contains an embedded script payload within an XFA form, which is designed to execute arbitrary code. This indicates a delivery mechanism for a secondary payload, likely malicious. The ClamAV detection further confirms its malicious nature.

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.
  • ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36830 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36830
  • ClamAV detection on extracted artifact critical EXTRACTED_FILE_CLAMAV
    ClamAV flagged at least one file extracted from inside this sample. Even when the wrapping document carries no AV detection of its own, a hit on the carved artifact is a strong indicator the sample is a delivery vehicle.
  • 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
faa6684489efeca42cb3c853178a725d0007be9d3cb33c489e941f3421f4f258
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 60513 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36830
Obfuscation or payload: unlikely