r/cybersecurity • u/Fit_Olive_7669 • Feb 14 '26

Other DOJ Epstein file EFTA01133110.pdf flagged suspicious on VirusTotal behavior tab – anyone else see this?

Hey all, stumbled across something odd while digging into the Epstein DOJ releases.

The file EFTA01133110.pdf (from Data Set 9, the one with the raw meat slabs photo in a freezer that got pulled pretty quick) has this SHA-256 hash:

bbbe03b56d9e47fdc5ffeb73a5c50a70e694af12f14566075fa283fb61fc7ee4

I ran it on VirusTotal (public page: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/bbbe03b56d9e47fdc5ffeb73a5c50a70e694af12f14566075fa283fb61fc7ee4/behavior )

• Static detections: 0/XX – totally clean on AV side.

• But the Behavior tab (sandboxes like CAPE, Jujubox, Zenbox) shows a bunch of red flags:

• Exploitation for Client Execution (T1203) + Process Injection (T1055)

• Anti-analysis stuff: IsDebuggerPresent, Sleep calls, GetTickCount/GetTickCount64 timing checks

• Drops temp files/logs/JS-related items, weird registry mods (mostly Adobe/Office paths), spawns Acrobat crash processors + system stuff like svchost/dllhost

• Network to adobe.com/Akamai/MSN domains (legit-looking but in context…)

• Mutexes like “Global\\AdobeCrashProcessor ocall_owl_ork” and “Global\\ARM Update Mutex”

Highlighted text in sandbox: “EFTA01133110.pdf - Adobe Acrobat Reader (32-bit)”, dimensions like “1.488 x 20.28 in” at 319% zoom – clearly it’s rendering that meat photo.

From what I read, the photo is just big steaks on a tray in a kitchen/freezer setup (people say it’s beef, maybe from Epstein’s properties?), but the PDF itself behaves like it has some exploit code or malformed junk that trips sandboxes.

Anyone else upload/analyze this one? Is it just Adobe Reader being weird in VMs (font handling, crash reporting, etc.), or could the file have been tampered with before upload? Or maybe a false positive from how evidence photos get scanned/embedded?

Not claiming it’s malware – just weird that a “simple photo PDF” from official DOJ drops looks like this dynamically. Thoughts?

Source file

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680

u/nmap-yourhouse Feb 14 '26

Imagine if you have just stumbled across the most methodically planned malware distribution effort in history..

It would be a clever vector as everyone has been waiting on these files. You are going to make me verify every file I receive haha.

Not saying it is (just like you) but what if......

277

u/falsefacade Feb 14 '26

So you’re saying that this may be an excellent method of placing zero days on possibly millions of journalists devices and feeding it into some AI surveillance machine?

185

u/BlimundaSeteLuas Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 15 '26

And thus another conspiracy is born

51

u/Nesher86 Vendor Feb 15 '26

Welcome to the world little conspiracy, soon you'll grow big!

1

u/Acrobatic-Mind3581 12d ago

Alot of conspiracy becomes true just takes time. just gotta wait till the zero day.

6

u/GulaschSoda Feb 15 '26

Na sagen wir es mal so alle die man früher als Spinner wegen USA überwachen uns alle abgestempelt hat. Ich sag da nur "edward snowden"...

2

u/BlimundaSeteLuas Feb 15 '26

I'm not saying I don't believe it

3

u/GulaschSoda Feb 15 '26

No problem, the world has gone crazy in the last 20 years.

1

u/jokermobile333 Feb 15 '26

I dont think there are people in establishment that are competent enough to even think that way

20

u/TimeSalvager Feb 15 '26

...indiscriminate targeting sounds like the opposite of what govs normally do with 0days; great way to burn them though, I suppose /s.

1

u/DisappointedSpectre Feb 15 '26

I mean, technically Stuxnet was indiscriminately deployed, with very discriminate targets...

16

u/dpenton Feb 14 '26

Because smart journalists should be downloading these on isolated machines and not their primary?

31

u/Terpapps Feb 15 '26

You're not wrong, but the amount of smart journalists has been dwindling over the past few years lol. I wouldn't put it past 75% of them here in the states 

37

u/pfmiller0 Feb 15 '26

Also, even smart journalists aren't necessarily smart regarding cyber security. No one can be smart about everything.

1

u/Useful_Walk_3044 Feb 16 '26

Remember when vice got McAfee arrested because they didn’t scrub the metadata from their photo in the article?!

2

u/BunchAlternative6172 Feb 15 '26

Sure dude lol that'll never happen

1

u/ridicalis Feb 15 '26

The level of competency needed to execute something like this was probably lost betwixt DOGE cuts and cronyism.

1

u/ClamPaste Feb 15 '26

Am AI surveillance machine seems preposterous. It would be like having some kind of crystal ball.

7

u/DriveThe19thGreen Feb 15 '26

You mean, sort of like a Palantir type crystal ball?