Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 d8e65b65273c3a3c…

MALICIOUS

PDF

59.4 KB
MD5: 9a668ba62a1f21501c3c3ee6e6bedac3 SHA-1: d7976307ae791833bc8ea3f0256b6f930f8e7964 SHA-256: d8e65b65273c3a3c4eafaad6c78c8a201c85f7d7c59acaa46eeb16a50e1fb53c
256 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution T1059.001 PowerShell

The PDF file contains an embedded script payload and triggers a critical heuristic for CVE-2010-0188, indicating an exploit targeting Adobe Reader. ClamAV also detected the file as Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36830. The embedded script is likely responsible for downloading and executing a second-stage payload, although its exact functionality is obscured.

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
1398f85388fb1bf1e0e2e804b172ee7aa513ca64eb06e321045d585ba3993679
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 60107 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36830
Obfuscation or payload: unlikely