Adobe Finally Fixes Remote Launch 0-Day
Trailrunner7 sends in this excerpt from Threatpost (Adobe announcement here): "Adobe today shipped a critical Reader/Acrobat patch to cover a total of 17 documented vulnerabilities that expose Windows, Mac, and Unix users to malicious hacker attacks. The update, which affects Adobe Reader/Acrobat 9.3.2 and earlier versions, includes a fix for the outstanding PDF '/Launch' functionality social engineering attack vector that was disclosed by researcher Didier Stevens. As previously reported, Didier created a proof-of-concept PDF file that executes an embedded executable without exploiting any security vulnerabilities. The PDF hack, when combined with clever social engineering techniques, could potentially allow code execution attacks if a user simply opens a rigged PDF file." Relatedly, Brian Krebs blogs about the downsides of Adobe's increasingly Byzantine update process.
Why is every unpatched exploit a 0-day attack? Wouldn't this be more like a multi-month exploit?
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Missing from the summary is gsview. It makes a very secure pdf reader that works on windows, although it certainly isn't anything nice to look at. Uses ghostscript for the backend.
At first I thought you were just clueless, then I realized you were just a troll, now I'm just confused.
For the 90% of us who don't require all the minutiae of functionality and cruft which Adobe Reader offers, there are options. Obviously Mac folk are covered by Apple's built in Preview, but on Windows, Sumatra PDF is amazing and ridiculously small. It's better than Foxit, in my opinion, for barebones PDF viewing in Windows. Check it out! http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/index.html
You would have to be running pre-10.1 version of flash first. Then the exploit would have to force your system to execute code that was written for *nix. Since Windows is the majority of the market I doubt anyone has taken the time to write such code for this exploit. I think your safe. :)
Clueless (about this), not a troll, I truly just don't know.
If I have flash plugins installed, but not acrobat, and I did my browsing in an account without admin privileges, how vulnerable would I have been?
If you can't answer, perhaps you are clueless as well?
after reading the summary and the Brian Krebs blog. I realized that Adobe is shipping a buggy, risky piece of software.
I installed Foxit Reader (minus the Ask.com search bar)..
It seems much snappier, and is significantly smaller.
Don't get fooled into thinking a non-admin account is safe. Sure, unless you're root they probably can't set up a mail server, but check out all the files in your Documents directory. See anything the has financial information? Maybe a password list (encrypted or not)? How about email, do you store it on your computer? Do you use your browser to access any useful websites like email or banking sites? If you create a dummy account with highly restricted access (ie, you know what you're doing) you can protect yourself pretty well. Running a VM you never use for anything important is even better. Being complacent and thinking they'll never write a virus for Linux is a recipe for disaster (Google Gentoo malware, Unreal IRC malware, etc. and see how malware made it into REPOSITORIES let alone can be installed as a trojan).
Anyhow, would this have been a Flash vulnerability it could have affected the account you work in.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
As this is an issue in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader and you don't have either of them installed, you're not affected by this bug. It's very hard for software you don't have installed to cause problems.
There are other bugs in Flash though, they may cause problems, but this isn't one of them.
--sitharus
Doh! What does an Acrobat Reader vulnerability have to do with Flash?
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Thanks for the link. Comparing some documents side by side between Foxit and SumatraPDF, Sumatra rendering has some issues with gamma and images. Text rendering is a little better in Foxit. I can live with the yellow blank starting page, though.
I have used my ubuntu machine at home to look at several questionable flash based websites in the last few weeks
Well... Umm... You see, this fix has nothing to do with Flash, it's entirely in Adobe Reader...
But... Perhaps you should do a scan just in case. I'm not sure how questionable the sites you visit actually are, but if they are half as questionable as the sites I visit, you probably caught Erectile Dysfunction or something from just looking at it.
The MSP Installer is also available for those who may use Adobe Reader in silent installs/updates.
Side rant: Why does Adobe still only offer the unpatched versions of Reader on their front page?
Prove it.
Apparantly, the same vulnerability existed in both products (Flash was patched a couple of weeks ago). I'm not sure how that works - I thought this was the vulnerability inherent in the PDF spec (Foxit had a patch out the same week this was disclosed).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Ugh. I just updated on my Mac running 10.6.4. It looks like Adobe is still distributing Reader 9.3.0 as the default distribution package. I had to download/install this version and then apply individual patches for 9.3.1, 9.3.2, and finally 9.3.3. Annoying.
Perhaps it would have been easier had I updated from within Reader?
is it? oh shit
I only saw a proof-of-concept. Have people actually been exploiting this?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Thank you for the kind explanation
I still don't understand why I was modded down to troll, twice
my question wasn't intended to offend/inflame anyone, but apparently it did
I didn't see any MathML tests, and Firefox supports MathML rather well.
This time, whatever these idiots did, the jump from 9.3.0 to 9.3.3 doesn't work at all. It may have something to do with the idiotic "repair adobe pdf viewer" plugin dialogue, which has no title and opens at background, unclickable.
Idiots (hopefully they read) still install Adobe Updater to Utilities but they were lazy to feed it with data so, the dedicated (and working) Updater doesn't work too. Of course, it is still added to launchd per user schedule.
Man how worse you can get? I mean, I am not like those "Use Preview" guys, I actually hate that Quartz shell and I am in process of uninstalling all traces of Acrobat on my entire network for the first time since 1994. You should be glad you run Intel Mac, I actually have 10.4.11 and "Classic" emulating capability. Just yesterday, I launched the Classic/Adobe Reader (5) and was ashamed on behalf of them. That was some real cool, quality software on Mac it seems.
A user uninstalling and giving up Adobe Reader for the first time since 1994, I hope they will lay off Apple/Mac developer team first while going down.
Thank God Apple has some kind of X11 and I actually plan to use kpdf or even xpdf on this Mac Mini which has special needs (connected to 720P).
IMHO they should pray Steve Jobs doesn't have Adobe Reader on his system.
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=4692&fileID=4425
Normally, a "0 day attack" accompanied with some black background, text like html page occuring means
1) Company doesn't take it serious and demonstrates their own case or explains why it is non issue for 99.9% (of course, add to fix list)
2) Company takes it serious (sends out an emergency hotfix which may remove functionality and not very tested but, it works until real thing ships)
As Adobe took it serious but didn't ship a God damn ".bat" file (yes, ms-dos .bat is enough) to remove the component which isn't actually used you got confused.
It is indeed a 0 day but, Adobe isn't a sane company anymore.
I appreciate they probably had some QA to do in order to release this puppy and it took a while, but I loaded Evince, un-installed flash and called it a day. If you can't see it on youtube using their HTML 5 beta then that's a real good time to boot up Linux even if it's just in Xen or Oracle/Sun Virtualbox running on Windows. It works just fine for web browsing and less zero day exploits.
Sure, unless you're root they probably can't set up a mail server,
Whys that exactly? Does opening sockets require admin now?
In Unix, for port 25? Yes.
It's been nearly a week since I updated Reader! About time for another download install and unnecessary reboot!
Every single time Reader/Acrobat updates it resets its self as the default viewer. That's completely inappropriate behavior, especially for a 'security update'. (And no, I can't uninstall it. Job requires proofing PDF in Reader just like all my poor clients.)
I saw/overheard this in a bar recently (seriously):
Girl: So where do you work?
Guy: Adobe.
Girl: Oh yeah, you're the guys always asking me to update and reboot. *walks away*
When using ExitWindowsEx() at the end of your patch install, don't use the damned EWX_FORCE flag. It doesn't even give users enough time to respond to the "Save? Yes/No/Cancel" dialogs popping-up before the applications are kill -9'd and users lose all their unsaved data.
But since when did a botnet node's mail server have to listen on port 25?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
For spam, it could receive encrypted email through an RPC or other socket, and run an SMTP client.
Seriously, I think the first RBL check 99% of mail servers out there do is for "is originating SMTP server on a dynamic or residential connection".
As this is an issue in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader and you don't have either of them installed, you're not affected by this bug.
Would that this were so. One of the issues was with the PDF spec itself. Other PDF tools, such as Fox-It, were affected as well and patched recently.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Because both were built upon the same solid Adobe bedrock of swiss cheese, spaghetti code, and apathy.
It's about time, however there are still a few more exploits that have not been addressed....until these have been fixed too, i am sticking to fox it pdf reader....
Apparently you aren't as smart as you think you are, asshole
He's trying to be funny. Not sure if he's succeeding (I was up late last night and my cerebral cortex is malfunctioning this morning).
Free Martian Whores!
Check your email, I'm sure you can find some cheap v1agra.
Free Martian Whores!
I think it's mostly the apathy. PDF was really great when it was new, and really was a page description format not a web portal. Far beteter than sending ps files to the printer when it took 10 mintues per page just to send the bits. Adobe pisses me off so much because they used to be genuinely innovative and useful.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Thanks for bringing up Sumatra - do you happen to know any good pdf viewer for windows 98? (I tried Foxit 2.x but it's buggy as hell in win98).