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Adobe's Reader X Spoils New PDF Attack

Posted by timothy on from the stopped-clock-can-still-be-thrown-with-force dept.

CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer reports that Adobe's Reader X stymied a recent attack campaign, researchers said Thursday. But they're not sure why. 'I don't want to take anything away from Adobe — after all, a win is a win — but this particular exploit appears to be designed with previous versions of Reader in mind,' said Chris Greamo, who heads the security research lab at Invincea. 'What appears to have happened is that the exploit breaks, but we don't have a good sense if the sandbox was able to contain it.' Reader X, an upgrade issued last year, features a 'sandbox' designed to protect users from PDF exploits. Adobe claimed that a recently-addressed bug in Chrome that lets attackers escape the browser's sandbox was not present in Reader X's sandbox code. Google patched that bug, the first to earn the company's top bug bounty of $3,133, three weeks ago. Adobe said Thursday it will would ship its next regular update for Reader on Tuesday, Feb. 8."

3 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. Re:That's just sad. by icebraining · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't have a sandbox around (...) my PNG viewer

    Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-009: Vulnerability in PNG Processing Could Allow Remote Code Execution

    (...) nor my MP3 player

    Winamp MP3 Player Lets Malicious MP3 Files Control the Winamp Mini-browser and Cause Arbitrary HTML Scripts to Be Executed

    --
    Dilbert RSS feed
  2. and people wonder why Flash is Evil by Salvo · · Score: 3, Informative

    The problem is homogeny of the market.
    If every user has the same version of the same PDF reader, an exploit can spread to everyone.
    If an exploit won't affect people using Chrome PDF Viewer, Foxit Reader, gPDF or XPDF or Mac OS X Preview, it severely restricts the effectiveness of the exploit.
    If everyone uses Adobe Reader on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and mobile devices, an exploit like this can affect everyone.

    While there are 3rd Party implementations of Flash Players, Adobe Flash Player is still ubiquitous. Adobe evolve the "standard" for commercial reasons with every version, leaving 3rd Party implementations behind and incompatible with new versions of the "standard".

  3. Re:Brilliant Adobe Developers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's not Adobe that was wondering why, it was the researchers at Invincea.

    At least that's what the summary says.