Detailing the Security Risks In PDF Standard

crabel writes with this quote from the H Online: "At the 27th Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin security researcher Julia Wolf pointed out numerous, previously hardly known security problems in connection with Adobe's PDF standard. For instance, a PDF can reportedly contain a database scanner that becomes active and scans a network when the document is printed on a network printer. Wolf said that the document format is also full of other surprises. For example, it is reportedly possible to write PDFs which display different content in different operating systems, browsers or PDF readers — or even depending on a computer's language settings."

Comments

PDF is hacker-friendly way of making leaks

[shoppa]

I'm not so sure what anyone is in such a huff about. PDF is very hacker-friendly, and the confusion that the general public has in their belief that a PDF is just a "printer ready" format (as opposed to a general purpose vector-graphics, text, and programming environment) ALWAYS works to the hacker's benefit and never to "big brother's" benefit.

Perfect example: when the TSA's army of contractors "redacted" a document for public release, they simply drew (in PDF) black rectangles above the redacted text. Yet the original text was still there and intact.

Some here seem to view content that's below the surface (not visible with standard settings on standard Adobe tools) as a problem. Yet it is the perfect route to security leaks, a treasure-trove to anyone who knows how to look below the surface. And we hackers are the ones who know how to do that.