Critical Vulnerability In Adobe Reader

An anonymous reader writes "Core Security Technologies issued an advisory disclosing a vulnerability that could affect millions using Adobe's Reader PDF file viewing software. Engineers from CoreLabs determined that Adobe Reader could be exploited to gain access to vulnerable systems via the use of a specially crafted PDF file with malicious JavaScript content. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability requires that users open a maliciously crafted PDF file, thereby allowing attackers to gain access to vulnerable systems and assume the privileges of a user running Acrobat Reader."

Comments

For the uninformed:

[Joe Snipe]

Foxit FTW

Re:For the uninformed:

[JustinOpinion]

Another option for PDF reading on Windows is Sumatra PDF (if you prefer open-source).

Re:For the uninformed:

[Zonk (troll)]

That might work on some or most files, but there still is no replacement for Acrobat.

True, but we're getting closer. OpenOffice 3 now has a PDF Import extension, and of course for Windows there's PDFCreator (Gnome/KDE and OS X natively support printing to PDF).

Re:For the uninformed:

[JustinOpinion]

Perhaps, but you can have multiple PDF readers installed. And in terms of security, it's usually best to use the simplest application that will work.

So basically you could use FoxIt or Sumatra PDF to open most PDFs. And then for the rare one that uses some advanced stuff, you can fire up Acrobat. The fact is that most of the stuff that Acrobat supports that other PDF readers don't involves some kind of scripting. And really you shouldn't be running any scripts (even those that are, in principle, sandboxed) unless you have reason to trust them.

So a sensible strategy would seem to be that you open 99% of PDFs with a simpler reader, and only use Acrobat on the few that really need it, and only if the source of the PDF is trustworthy in your estimation.

(Yeah, I know... it's a bit of a pain to have multiple programs that do the same thing. In principle you "shouldn't have to" in the sense that your PDF reader should be secure. But in reality it seems like a reasonable precaution.)

Re:For the uninformed:

[internerdj]

Slower than Adobe Reader? What does it do, steal all the cycles from neighboring computers as well?

Re:For the uninformed:

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you're trying to look smart but export and import aren't the same thing.

Single-purpose tools are good

[davidwr]

Does Adobe Reader come with a "safe mode" with just plain old PDF enabled?

If not, it should.

Re:Single-purpose tools are good

[Roland Piquepaille]

Your remark leads to the general question: what business does a document viewer have trying to execute embedded Javascript scripts? a PDF file is essentially a PostScript file, so its content is supposed to be interpreted as a page description and nothing more.

This is reminiscent of Microsoft's "executable" .DOC files that was used to spread viruses around years ago. This is what you get when you try to make a tool too clever for its own good.

Re:Single-purpose tools are good

[bcrowell]

Does Adobe Reader come with a "safe mode" with just plain old PDF enabled?

To disable js, go to Edit, Preferences, JavaScript, and uncheck "Enable Acrobat JavaScript".

Even if the js-related security bugs are fixed, it's still a privacy issue, because js in a pdf file can be used to track who's reading a particular document.

Personally, when I see that a piece of software has a long history of security problems, I take that as my cue to remove it from my system. I don't really care that they keep fixing the bugs. The fact that it has this history demonstrates that the software wasn't written with the correct attention to security, and it's likely to have more such problems in the future.

If you're running Linux, xpdf starts up extremely fast, and that's why I use it as my pdf plugin in Firefox. If you want something a little more modern, try evince.

People have posted saying that on Windows, you should switch to Foxit, but the article says that the security flaw was found first in Foxit, and only later in Adobe Reader. I actually tried to get the science division at the community college where I teach to switch to putting Foxit on machines in the student labs as the default pdf plugin. However, when the faculty were testing it, they found that it was not correctly displaying some of the pdfs they were using.

Re:Which again...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are part of the problem.

Re:Which again...

[Nimey]

It raises the question, godsdamnit. Here's what "begging the question" actually means:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question