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Adobe Still Ignores Elcomsoft-Discovered Holes
evenprime writes "In 2001, Dmitry Sklyarov
described vulnerabilities in Adobe
Acrobat and Adobe Acrobat Reader while
giving a talk at
Defcon 9.
As has
been
previously
mentioned, Dmitry was arrested the day after this talk. He and his company Elcomsoft were charged with violating the DMCA. Now Elcomsoft have announced that
Adobe, two years later,
has still not patched these bugs."
They once warned them, then the public about their feeble rot13 encryption scheme.
They got busted because of the DMCA.
Now, they do it again.
I guess Dmitri should avoid the USA during the next months, otherwise, he'll soon understand that in Soviet American Corps, sucees is not a matter of technical excellency but rather a matter of negociation skills and of litigation.
So, why should Adobe managers solve this "bug" when they'll get promoted by complaining about a "criminal offense" ?
(Note to the mods: I have been hard-working during 18 months in an American Corp, I know what it is about.)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Maybe more companies will bait their software with easy exploits to snare those who try to circumvent it
If nothing else, it gives the companies an excuse to their shareholders for shoddy coding.
[...]may we ask who found those bugs again?
Foolish PC users! Us Macintosh people will be entirely unaffected by these exploits... ...because Adobe is starting to stop making programs for mac... :(
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
... of sweeping the bugs under the rug and ignoring that they exist while punishing the kid for pointing out the bugs.
When those bugs crawl out from under the rug... that's when you start feeling the pinch... quite literally... coz they're nasty bugs that bite.
...if that isn't a new way of fixing bugs.
Sueing the people until they stop caring and reporting them (the bugs).
That amazon guy probably has already patented it.
its just a way to trick acrobat into thinking your plugin is signed. if your installing a plugin for anything you should realize it will be executing on your computer and proceed with caution. its not the hosting app's job to make sure its plugins don't do anything they're not suppose to do (imo that responsibility should fall on the os, but thats mho) - so whatever extra security added by adobe to try and prevent untrusted plugins is pure gratis
bite my glorious golden ass.
As I have said before, one of my friend is blind.
Have you got any idea how fscking difficult it is for the poor chap to read "protected"[1] PDF files? Trust me, it's pure hell!!
At least, since Adobe has decided to pull an MS on its users and ignore known problems, maybe I'll be able to crack some of these protected files for my friend, so that he can read them.
So, there are, er, ahem... unexpected benefits to this sh___y Adobe attitude...
Just my US$ 0.02...
[1] "Protected" as in: "can't print, can't copy, can't save as". Yes, Virginia, you can create that kind of PDF files!
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
You missed the point, the vulnerability is a big one and doesnt involve the final user.
As you may already know many companies use PDF to realse secure documents, this companies are confident that adobe security will keep the document as read only so no llama will make changes for fun or copy paste their info.
But then we have this vulnerability where you can load a custom plugin in secure mod, this plug in could use all the privileges a secure plug in has, like for example saving an unencrypted version of the file or, why not, a pain text copy.
This sound like a big vulnerability to me, but companies that use Acrobat are the ones that should be angry.
Sigs are for morons... Wait a minute...
Even the article gets it wrong now.
Sklyarov!
Perhaps Adobe should work with Lexmark to help them out with the crypto coding; you know, that great company that protects the consumer against accidentally using cheap ink with strong cryptographic chips. Then Adobe could not only provide a PDF option to prevent you from printing a document, they could also enforce that if printed, a PDF document will only be printed with 100%-genuine Lexmark toner. Oh, I see another option with Kodak here, perhaps by embedding RFID tags directly in that specical Kodak paper.
BTW, did anyone notice that with the latest PDF specification, version 1.5, which corresponds to Acrobat 6, that they added verbage to the copyright/license part to enforce that all software which implements the PDF specification must obey all those stupid magic security bits? They claim the specification is open and free for anybody to develop software around it, but that since the "format" is copyrighted all independently developed software must obey their fragile DRM schemes. How in the world can they copyright a format; sure their specification is copyrighted being a printed work, but the "format"?
I don't think it is..
Sure you have chapters, exact replication of your original document, DRM, cross platform, and other nifty features, but all this and more could be implemented using a combination of HTML, PHP, and java.
For example, if I was going to sell some html online I could use the PHP application oscommerce to make sure I got paid, HTML for chapters and such, and java to disable people from simply copying and pasting the text somewhere it could be shared.
Sure, it sounds really technical to the folks that are used to doing a "file>save>PDF" in acrobat. But I wouldn't think that it would be that much more difficult.
I, personally, would like to make my annoyance at this situation known.
Who do we contact at Adobe? How do we make a serious stink about this? Are the board members of this company contactable somehow? I'd go to the effort of writing a decent letter explaining to them their stupidity and callousness, if I knew where to send it.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I once asked my boss why our company has to raise so many lawsuits each year. He told me under the influerence of a couple of beers that if we don't keep our lawyers busy they'd find something to sue us.
"They're like guarddogs" after more beers "if you don't feed them well they might bite you one day"
I know this is an unfair comparison. Accept my apology to all the faithful employees...I meant to those guarddogs.
After all, we knew the DMCA would have this effect on companies and software, where bugfixes are unnecessary by litigation.
Why fix software when we can send lawyers and make examples and burning effigies instead?
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
During every upgrade to a new Windows OS, we are advised to run a check for file viruses using anti-virus s/w. It's a tragedy that software exploits are described as viruses and linked to terrorists and success-haters. Why can't MS make newer releases of their OSes atleast immune to known viruses and the associated vulnerabilities???
Every new release of s/w causes some code to break - a game here, a dll there, an application and so forth. The only thing that runs well on all flavours of MS OSes from DOS to XP is viruses!
It's easier to obfuscate and profitable as well, apparently.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
If future commercial software relies on the law for its security rather than actual software security, this may be a good thing for open source. When that happens, we really can then say that OSS is truly more secure.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Yeah, those fucking fascist pigs at Adobe would never think to include a menu option like "View -> Continuous - Facing" in Acrobat Reader to view facing pages alongside each other, would they.
Fight the power, man!
I think this must be the official reply from the Adobe spokesperson.
"It usualy starts with some screaming. Afterwards there is much running around."
Very, very few people, apparently, have both technical knowledge and managerial knowledge.
The problem mentioned in the Slashdot story appears to be that Bruce Chizen, Adobe president, is not prepared for the intellectual challenge of running a technical company. He's been a salesman and marketing manager all his life. Now Adobe has become dependent on Acrobat, and has a big customer for Acrobat, the IRS (U.S. Internal Revenue Service).
It's amazing. The job pays extremely well, even though the smart people are gone, Adobe has laid off people, and the stock is slowly sliding.
We live in a business climate in which a few people at the top make a huge amount of money, and other people suffer, even though they helped make the money.
There seems to be a pattern with technological companies. The people who really understand the technology get tired and go on to other things, or are forced out of the company they founded (as was Jobs at Apple). Everyone pretends that nothing has happened, and the company runs on inertia for a while. With luck, the new managers, who try to hide the fact that they really don't understand what the company does, encounter a business upturn. But inside the company is dying.
John Sculley was a sugar water salesman (Pepsi) before he came to Apple and forced Jobs out. Apple looked okay for a while, but slowly lost importance. Then Jobs came back, and Apple became very important.
Adobe's Postscript is brilliant technology. Using Postscript to make PDF files is brilliant. Knowing what photo editing tools need to go into Photoshop requires deep technical understanding. Probably Bruce Chizen understands none of this. Can a manager run something he does not understand? No.
[monty python reference]
DIMITRI: If you will not fix rot13 encryption, we shall publish an exploit!
ADOBE LAWYER: You don't frighten us, Russian pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottom, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Dimitri Hacker, you and all your silly Russian k-nnnnniggets. Thpppppt! Thppt!Thppt!
SLASHDOT: What a strange company.
DIMITRI: Now look here, my good man--
ADOBE LAWYER: I don't wanna talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! You mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
SLASHDOT: Is there someone else up there he could talk to?
ADOBE LAWYER: No, now go away or I shall sue you a second time-a!
ADOBE EMPLOYEE #1: I didn't know we were Idiots?
ADOBE EMPLOYEE #2: Of course, why else do you think we are protecting this ridiculous algorithm?
[/monty python reference]
As far as I know, most viruses in their execution work using common OS scripts and commands.
As far as I know, most Windows viruses can't spread without either 1. opening an outgoing connection on SMTP's port, 2. telling Outlook to open an outgoing connection on SMTP's port, or 3. opening executables installed by the administrator for writing. Not giving unknown programs the capability to do this would stop viruses from spreading. This is possible even in a Windows environment: don't allow unknown programs to open connections to ports they have no business with (e.g. only Postfix should open an SMTP session), don't give users the right to overwrite files outside of the temp directory and the user's home directory, and run executable e-mail attachments as the Guest user.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This really shouldn't surprise anyone. The DMCA gives companies a right to sue if you reverse engineer an encyption device. But the DMCA offers no protecting to the consumer by requireing a company to FIX the problem.
Besides /., this story has not had a whole lot of publicity. Add to that the fact that most people wouldn't know how to decrypt the e-books (and, more importantly, probably don't all that much care), there really isn't much incentive for Adobe to fix it.
The puzzling thing to me is that it seems like it really wouldn't cost all that much to fix. I mean, it is a patch afterall and every friggin time I start up Photoshop Elements it is downloading some update (though not sending any of my personal information... hehe!).
IAAL, so what I start to think is: Does Adobe have any liability for failure to patch the software when an author loses money because his or her ebook is pirated? No doubt in advertising and selling the software, Adobe touted the encryption as a safety feature. Contributory infringement, maybe? Misrepresentation? A warranty theory? Hmm....
They characterize a new bug (oversight in the fix, see below) as having done absolutely nothing. Not very honest...
I'm pretty impressed that slashdot didn't post the inaccurate "no improvements for 2 years" title, when it is clearly a fact (based on the text of the article) that Adobe added a new, stronger signing method in version 6, as a good-faith attempt to solve this problem. Yes, "2 years" appears to be true, but that's not the 2 years from July 2001 to July 2003 (today).
Likewise, the statement at the top: "oftware released in 2003 contains vulnerabilities disclosured in 2001" gives the impression that the new version contains the exact same vulnerability, rather than an oversight in a major rework of the security mechanism that was intended to fix the bug.
It sounds like Adobe really did try to fix the problem. They implemented a new, strong signing method. They even adandoned backwards compatibility and refuse to load the old, easily forged plugins when in certified mode. As Elcom's message explains, Acrobat 6 only allows "certified" mode if all the plugins have the new, strong signatures, or if all the plugins if finds have these signatures it automatically goes into certified mode.
The real complaint appears to be an oversight that some undocument function, which is callable in uncertified mode by an unsigned plugin (or one of the legacy weakly authenticated plugins) can call this undocumented function and cause Acrobat to switch into certified mode. Quoting from the Elcom message:
So there you have it, a secutity real announcement, burried after a lengthy rant about how slow and unresponsive Adobe has been.
Yes, Adobe has a bad attitude. Yes, they fscked up and their attempt to fix the problem still has an exploitable weakness. Ok, I can buy that Adode has a bad attitude.
Elcom (or specifically, Vladimir Katalov) doesn't impress me much either, when it comes to attitude and standards of professional conduct. This angry rant attempts to paint a picture of Adobe has having still done utterly nothing to fix this problem... including a very misleading tital and summary.
Katalov sinks to the tactic of use a embedded an advisory of a weakness to attract attention to an angry rant about his frustrations with Adobe's unresponsive history.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Adobe is trying to tell customers that they have a format in which you can send a document to someone, and that document will only be readable on that one computer, or will not be printable, or will not be copyable to the clipboard or whatever.
This is fundamentally impossible. If my computer can display the document on screen for me, then this means that the computer MUST have all the required information to do so. This includes any and all secret keys if the document is encrypted and so on.
This implies that the computer also has all the info needed to print the document, or copy it to the clipboard or whatever. Now, Adobes product could only work if the computer "knew" how to do this, but refused to do it anyway, in other words, if the computer was not obeying the end-user.
This is possible with secure hardware and similar that refuse to run code that is not digitally signed by the real master (not the end-user and owner!). But with the current computers that happily run anything you the user want in priviledged mode it is not possible.
Sure they could, and probably should, patch this spesific hole. But there's nothing Adobe can do to make they so-called "secure pdf" actually do what they claim it will do. And they know it.
Adobe's response to the bug includes this gem:
Exploits of this vulnerability violate the End User License Agreement included with Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Acrobat Reader.
They say this as if it actually matters!
This "vulnerability" means that you can run plugins WITHOUT having them signed by Adobe.
THAT is the problem. Companies use Adobe Acrobat to create forms that should not be altered outside the company, like contracts, and send them to their customers to fill out. If said company can no longer trust that their customers won't be able to change text in their contract without notifying them, then Adobe Acrobat is completely meaningless.
My last job was at an ISP that would create contracts and accounting papers in Acrobat, then send them to people to fill in certain information. Sometimes, the documents could be 30-50 pages in length. It obviously would take quite a long time to manually go through and verify that nothing inappropriate (i.e. the cost of getting out of the contract) would be changed. Of course, in that case, the company deserved whatever it got, but that's beside the point.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
It's a lot less effort to sic the lawyers on people than actually PATCH the vulnerability. Security through obscurity (and fear)
It's even more damning because Adobe just recently upgraded their PDF Reader software from version 5 to version 6, yet have failed to patch this particular problem. You'd think that somewhere among all the features (?) added between two major releases they'd have found time for this.
Too many people don't pay attention to where their plug-ins and other downloads come from - that is where a big part of the problem starts. End users need to own up to that fact that when a warning comes up about an unsigned or questionable certificate, they need to ask some serious questions before installing.
Sure, Adobe still has a "vulnerability" in the strict sense of the word, and if they want to continue marketing a weak security product, that is their business. In my opinion, their inspired release of Acrobat Elements will make Adobe a bigger player and Acrobat a major product. Going in to this with a problem is just bad business and will not help them. And whacking the messenger with the DMCA is definitely not a solution!
Of course, you can remove any pdf security with GhostScript, using a cracked dll.
You don't need to crack the dll - you could just take the open source version, change the source, and compile it.
"Cracked dll" sounds sexier, I suppose ;) After all, only evil hackers would want to defeat "PDF security" :)
Well, I don't want to sound like a jerk, but it's not my problem, and security settings (often applied inappropriately or inadvertently) cause me a lot of hassles.
Actually, if such a change to a contract was made it would be easy to prove when it came to light and grounds for criminal charges, (forgery, fraud, whatever). The same as someone making changes to a paper contract. This is a case of using technical means to "enforce" legalities, and in the process inconveniencing the vast majority of PDF users who use it to transfer and use artwork in publishing. Security was an afterthought, and has never worked well, and I'm happy with that.
Anecdote: Almost 20 years ago, when Adobe introduced PostScript, they tried to keep it proprietary. Fonts in particular were encrypted, and for a long time only Adobe knew how to make real Type 1 fonts, which were very expensive. Then the format was reverse engineered, and we had dozens, then hundreds of alternate sources of quality fonts much cheaper. Adobe eventually opened the format when Truetype appeared which was an open format from the beginning.
It obviously would take quite a long time to manually go through and verify ...
This could be easily automated, (I can think of several methods off the top of my head, I'm sure you can too) and since this "vulnerability" has been known for two years or more, and is still open, maybe you should be doing that now.
Thank God they only do media-like applications. Imagine what would happen if they were responsible for system-level applications or the operating system. A company that drags its feet to this degree in patching security holes could really be a problem. I just can't imagine what that would be like. Can you?
I had a sucky sig.
Adobe is selling a lie. You can't promise a "secure" digital format. If you give me a buch of bytes, I can change it. Hell, if you give me a piece of paper, I can change it. All you can do about it is offer a reference and detect the change. Even then, someone might sneak in and change your reference. The whole secure digital thing is bullshit.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
can they be charged under the PATRIOT Act?
The parent might be flamebait, but it is also insightful.
.doc format and find a Windoze machine somewhere around (or a Mac, or *nix with OpenOffice, or anything else).
.html file, or even a .doc file (as proprietary as it is).
Adding artificial limitations to computer programs is stupid. PDF format is evil and serves little valid purposes. One of them is remote printing - sending an electronic copy to someone else, who can print it and have the print layout preserved. But if you need to print the document, you can probably get it in
Unfortunately, most people don't use PDFs for printing, they use PDFs to read the documents on the computer, using their screens, not paper. And treating the electronic document as a paper one (even with continuos pages) is extremely stupid. If we judge Acrobat Reader not on the basis of how similar documents look on PalmOS PDA and on some Weird (tm) computer with some Queer OS (tm), but on the basis of its reader functionality, it will probably get rated only 4/10, not more. There are millions of important and useful features >>>that are missing in Acrobat Reader. Like automatically opening the document at the same position where you was reading it last time (and remember my settings, not document defaul settings). Or changing the fonts/colour/background as it suits this individual user. Or the ability to make notes, highlight text, doodle on the margines, etc. (not in the Adobe Acrobat, but in the Acrobat Reader, where they are actually needed). And the ability to start up instantly (what good is a reference book if you're unable to check it quickly?).
And please don't forget that if you give the fool the ability to create PDF files, the biggest problem is that he will use it. There are too many PDF files and most often the same task can be done MUCH better by an
In short, the Acrobat Reader is actually crap, it is total crap, it is a lame piece of crap or, as the parent so elegantly put it, it is a "fucking nazi peice of shit".
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Business schools have set models and techniques of management that are designed to be generic. You can't sell a product (generic business education) if it doesn't work in all fields. Business schools, IMHO, are a damn waste of time.
Also, if you really want to make "managing" a profession, then the traditional hierarchy-of-power-implies-hierarchy-of-pay model where managers make more money than the people working for them doesn't make sense. It was designed in the days when managers worked their way up from the ranks, and were the most senior and experienced of the rank-and-file. This fixed pay structure (despite the fact that it's much easier to find a business degree than, say, a chemical engineering degree) violates our demand/supply model.
To some extent, the business world has already recognized this, which is why the highly-paid-consultant, the guy who makes more than the manager hiring him, has come to the fore. It's also a shame that this can't be recognized and also applied to regular engineer employees.
May we never see th
Just a question. Any ideas why EFF.org would be supporting Adobe after the Elcomsoft case?
http://www.eff.org/thanks/
Don't support DRM - Boycott Itunes
This reminds me of what's happened with Microsoft's Reader - although the significant difference there is that (after 6 months) they did actually bother to try to patch the hole (Convert LIT version 1.2 does not work with the updated version of Reader). They didn't do a particularly good job though, and so a few days later Convert LIT 1.4 was released.
I'm irritated at "security" being shoehorned into a DTP appliction. Also, since it isn;t secure abyway (as the article), it's just maiking me waste my time and only providing you with imaginary security.
If the "securing" stage is too irritating or annoying, why don't you use Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer or something that doesn't have those options?
Because those applications are quite useless for DTP.
I use PDF because it's part of a publishing system. I lay out books, print to PDF, the printer prints them. That's all I'm interested in. PDF is the lingua franca of DTP. That's what it was designed for. You can use it for what you want, but don;t make it harder for the rest of us.
The "security applications" you mentioned hardly require the graphic abilities of PDF. I'm sure ther are many more secure methods of transferring data. Make one of those more user-friendly, and forget about the broken security of Acrobat. There are many things in this world that can easily be done, but shouldn't have to be.
My point was that the vulnerability already exists, and if you want to use them for those purposes, you should make sure that they really haven't been tampered with. You said "deal with the problem". That's exactly what I meant.There are probably off-the shelf apps that can compare two PDFs (there is one built in, but it could be better). If the only difference is the signature, then you're fine. Of course, it'd be much simpler if you just used ASCII -- and I don't see why not.
It's even more damning because Adobe just recently upgraded their PDF Reader software from version 5 to version 6, yet have failed to patch this particular problem. You'd think that somewhere among all the features (?) added between two major releases they'd have found time for this.
Working in a software development shop with a corporate attitude, I can understand why this didn't get fixed.
In the statement they issued in response to CERT's advisory on this, they address the issue as an end-user security issue, not a DRM issue. Since they essentially claim it's really not a big deal, their development side probably considers it resolved.
With the arrest and no other obvious targets on the radar, their business & legal side probably also consider it resolved, but probably only because they consider it a case of DMCA violation and not a Big Freaking Hole in their product's DRM functionality.
This is not surprising. What Adobe is trying to do is fundamentally impossible to do as long as the users still have ultimate control over their computers.
Microsoft has a solution for that.
Someone explain to me what it is exactly we are supposed to do concerning security issues when the following seems to be the standard M.O.:
1)Create Buggy Software
2)Prosecute anybody who finds these bugs.
3)?????
4)Profit!!!
Why not just pass a law a to make it illegal to complain?
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
/.
...at... Alameeda?" Poor guys were totally baffled.
You acuse others of misleading statements... but I was actually at defcon9, and was in the audience during Dmitry's presentation. I think you were not.
Elcomsoft did not sell an exploit tool. They sold a companion product for a flawed piece of commercial software. (Just like the companies that sell antiviruses for windows.) This product allowed users to exercise their legal rights under Russian law.
Dmitry did not "announce the exploit at defcon". He gave a presentation detailing weaknesses in a commercial product. These weaknesses were already well known to exist, since Elcomsoft's extant commercial products took advantage of them, thus there was no "announcement".
I personally saw no distribution of either the (russian-legal) Elcomsoft product or of any mythical "polished, for-profit exploit", although I admit that I left early. I do not know of any person who proveably received any software from Dmitry, and everyone I know who was present did not receive any software at that presentation.
"The nuclear wessels?
--Charlie
My first thought after reading this was that the company was embarrassed and didn't want to admit to the bugs.
But then I realized something...
I've worked in companies which were active beta and alpha testers for adobe software of all kinds, but especially for the print industry.
Adobe rarely admits bugs. Period. As long as the problem is not a show-stopper (or is an obscure show-stopper), it will rarely get fixed. It _may_ get a mention in the knowledgebase, but this is not a given.
There are still things plauging the printing industry in multiple versions of multiple Adobe products -- Acrobat, Illustrator, Indesign, etc.
So, no, it's not a surpise that Adobe didn't fix this. They don't fix much.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.