Malicious PDF — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 f1289fa257dfd520…

MALICIOUS

PDF

60.1 KB
MD5: 467e87c00974d8a611b895c19c64d662 SHA-1: 700fdc7e6661cf4ffeef67587214126bc98f6d90 SHA-256: f1289fa257dfd520f96bfc45a9f5e5e0e0513574f1b879d5113a5a47b70f1851
316 Risk Score

Malware Insights

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

This PDF document is malicious and exploits CVE-2010-0188, a vulnerability in Adobe Reader related to XFA forms. The critical heuristic firings indicate the presence of an exploit targeting this CVE and an embedded script payload. The ClamAV detection further confirms its malicious nature. The embedded script, though truncated, appears to be involved in downloading and executing a second-stage payload, as suggested by the repeated concatenation of a character 'z' which likely forms part of a larger string or URL.

Heuristics 10

  • 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.
  • eval() call high PDF_EVAL
    eval() found — commonly used for obfuscated exploit execution
  • 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.
  • Suspicious extracted artifact medium EXTRACTED_FILE_STATIC_TRIAGE
    One or more files extracted from inside this sample matched static suspicious-content checks such as script obfuscation, encoded payload blobs, packed data, or execution/download terms.
  • 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
01995c7da3c4b0e42e627674b54c4f109f1400ac5cedfdfa4e282b9d091fbec9
pdf-embedded-file PDF EmbeddedFile object 8 at offset 0xC6 60762 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Pdf.Exploit.Agent-36830
Obfuscation or payload: likely
Carved artifact contains 1 eval/decoder/string-building token(s).