Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 c8d11a68add698ab…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.4 KB
MD5: a50c7dc6ecd89d0bf3f795cedbdcd931 SHA-1: 5325ef9f00b8bd71ce32dec628e76cf73fb1c321 SHA-256: c8d11a68add698abbe3fc3b27e51092beef1004c51dba8310c3bba449bdba921
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204.002 Malicious File: Malicious PDF T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell

The sample is a PDF document that exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. The PDF contains embedded script payloads within XFA form elements, indicating an attempt to execute malicious code upon opening. The embedded script is likely responsible for downloading and executing a second-stage payload, though its exact functionality is obscured. The presence of XFA and the specific CVE points to a targeted exploit delivery mechanism.

Heuristics 6

  • 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.
  • 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
532f41709aa53eead20975ee1cdd0b7c1072e8bb96fa7acb1a1cf8806e0c48f8
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101045 bytes