Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 cce1da677f8e2c82…

MALICIOUS

PDF

99.8 KB
MD5: 1ebd3eee8ec83a72328593795b671610 SHA-1: 6104aceeb3fe1a4ee0b236bffbc0712fdd94cfd3 SHA-256: cce1da677f8e2c82d26e03e44e46f0b9f5f30a714ce7c13a26f5372a11860e3c
136 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

The sample is a PDF file that exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to LibTIFF and XFA forms. The heuristic firings indicate an embedded script payload within an XFA form, which is characteristic of exploit documents designed to deliver a second-stage payload. The embedded file itself is likely the payload. The document body content is heavily obfuscated and truncated, preventing a clear understanding of the lure, but the exploit itself is clear.

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
330833e4820e20f5a8a88739f2eea373d07b1f67766b64baa771f4cb95dfeeee		 pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 101489 bytes

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