How to Create a Fake PDF Trojan with AppleScript

While hackers have taken advantage of numerous vulnerabilities in Adobe's products to deliver payloads to Windows users via PDF files, a malicious PDF file can also wreak havoc on a Mac that's using the default Preview app. So think twice before double-clicking a PDF open on your MacBook — it might just be a Trojan with a rootkit inside.

In this small, two-part series, I'll detail how a hacker could create a file that appears to be an ordinary PDF file but is actually a Trojanized AppleScript that will silently execute malicious code on a target MacBook or other Mac computer. In the GIF below, you can see a real PDF being opened as well as its fake PDF version with the malicious code.