peepdf-3 is a Python 3 tool to explore PDF files in order to find out if the file can be harmful or not. The aim of this tool is to provide all the necessary components that a security researcher could need in a PDF analysis without using 3 or 4 tools to make all the tasks.
With peepdf it's possible to see all the objects in the document showing the suspicious elements, supports all the most used filters and encodings, it can parse different versions of a file, object streams and encrypted files. With the installation of STPyV8 and Pylibemu it provides Javascript and shellcode analysis wrappers too. Apart of this it's able to create new PDF files and to modify/obfuscate existent ones.
As of version 3.0.0, peepdf-3 no longer includes pylibemu as a requirement in order to use peepdf-3 on Windows systems. However, all functionality of libemu, pylibemu, and sctest still exist, and will function on Linux systems.
The main functionalities of peepdf are the following:
Analysis:
- Decodings: hexadecimal, octal, name objects
- More used filters
- References in objects and where an object is referenced
- Strings search (including streams)
- Physical structure (offsets)
- Logical tree structure
- Metadata
- Modifications between versions (changelog)
- Compressed objects (object streams)
- Analysis and modification of Javascript (STPyV8): unescape, replace, join
- Shellcode analysis (Libemu python wrapper, pylibemu)
- Variables (set command)
- Extraction of old versions of the document
- Easy extraction of objects, Javascript code, shellcodes (>, >>,
$>, $ >>) - Checking hashes on VirusTotal
- Detection of common encryption methods
- Output of XML and JSON data
Creation/Modification:
- Basic PDF creation
- Creation of PDF with Javascript executed wen the document is opened
- Creation of object streams to compress objects
- Embedded PDFs
- Strings and names obfuscation
- Malformed PDF output: without endobj, garbage in the header, bad header...
- Filters modification
- Objects modification
Ways to use peepdf:
- Basic execution
- Interactive console
- Script mode
- JSON Output
- XML Output
- VirusTotal analysis
- OCR
TODO:
- Embedded PDFs analysis
- Improving automatic Javascript analysis
- GUI
Related articles:
- Spammed CVE-2013-2729 PDF exploit dropping ZeuS-P2P/Gameover
- New peepdf v0.2 (Version Black Hat Vegas 2012)
- peepdf supports CCITTFaxDecode encoded streams
- Explanation of the changelog of peepdf for Black Hat Europe Arsenal 2012
- How to extract streams and shellcodes from a PDF, the easy way
- Static analysis of a CVE-2011-2462 PDF exploit
- Analysis of a malicious PDF from a SEO Sploit Pack
- Analysing the Honeynet Project challenge PDF file with peepdf Part 1 Part 2
- Analyzing Suspicious PDF Files With Peepdf
Included in:
You can install / use peepdf-3 via these methods:
- From PyPI via pip -
python3 -m pip install peepdf-3 - From GitHub via pip and git -
python3 -m pip install git+https://github.com/digitalsleuth/peepdf-3.git - Clone the GitHub repo, cd into the
peepdf-3folder,chmod +x peepdf.pyand./peepdf.py
- As of version 3.0.0, there are no limitations with the installation and usage of peepdf-3, as the hard requirement for pylibemu has been lifted. The functionality still remains for Linux systems.
- The current maintainer of this project (Corey Forman - digitalsleuth), does not receive any funding for, and is not currently seeking any monetary contributions for this work. If you are willing to provide assistance, programming contributions, and feedback, that is always welcome.
- As this project originated with Jose Miguel Esparza, I will continue to leave his sentiments, and PayPal link, below to acknowledge his original product.
You are free to contribute with feedback, bugs, patches, etc. Any help is welcome. Also, if you really enjoy using peepdf, you think it is worth it and you feel really generous today you can donate some bucks to the project ;) Thanks!
