Rise in Deceptive PDF: The Gateway to Malicious Payloads

Authored by Yashvi Shah and Preksha Saxena

McAfee Labs has recently observed a significant surge in the distribution of prominent malware through PDF files. Malware is not solely sourced from dubious websites or downloads; certain instances of malware may reside within apparently harmless emails, particularly within the PDF file attachments accompanying them. The subsequent trend observed in the past three months through McAfee telemetry pertains to the prevalence of malware distributed through non-portable executable (non-PE) vectors.

Figure 1: Rise in …

attachments distribution downloads emails file files gateway labs malicious malicious payloads malware may mcafee payloads pdf websites