Title: Adobe Acrobat Reader Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
Severity: HIGH
Description: Adobe Acrobat Reader is prone to a remote code-execution vulnerability when handling specially malformed PDF files.

Successful exploits may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of a user running the affected application. Failed attempts will likely result in denial-of-service conditions.

New versions of Adobe Reader, Acrobat to arrive Tuesday
Dan Kaplan - October 09, 2009

As part of its second-ever quarterly security update, Adobe on Tuesday plans to release new versions of Reader and Acrobat to address a number of flaws, including one that is being exploited in live attacks.

Adobe is set to distribute Reader and Acrobat versions 9.1.3 and 8.1.6 for Windows, Mac and UNIX, and version 7.1.3 for Windows and Mac. The updates, to coincide with Microsoft's monthly patch release, will plug a number of vulnerabilities, including a critical bug present in version 9.1.3 that is being leveraged in targeted but limited in-the-wild attacks.

Don't Get Web 2.0wned

A recent attack in which tainted banner ads served up rogue software for visitors of popular sites such as drudgereport.com, lyrics.com and horoscope.com is a stark reminder of the importance of keeping up-to-date on software patches.

According to Web vulnerability scanning firm ScanSafe, between Sept. 19 and 21, tainted ads that tried to foist malicious software cycled through some of the Web's most popular destinations (drudgereport.com receives more a million visitors per day, according to compete.com).

Unlike the attack last week from rogue ads on the New York Times Web site - which heaved bogus anti-virus software onto visitors' systems - this series of bad ads sought to drop a Trojan horse that hijacks the victim's search results, ScanSafe found.

The hostile ads tried to exploit several software vulnerabilities in order to drop the search hijackers onto victim PCs. One was a Microsoft Windows/Internet Explorer vulnerability that Redmond issued a patch to fix in July. The attackers also exploited several flaws in Adobe Reader and Acrobat, infecting systems that were missing the latest updates for those programs, ScanSafe found.

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Acrobat vulnerability may affect Mac users

by Michael Rose (RSS feed) on Feb 20th 2009 at 10:30AM

As if the baked-in security issues weren't enough to deal with, Adobe has announced today that all versions since v7 of Acrobat and Acrobat Reader on all platforms -- including Mac OS X -- are vulnerable to an Javascript exploit that can crash Acrobat.

As if the baked-in security issues weren't enough to deal with, Adobe has announced today that all versions since v7 of Acrobat and Acrobat Reader on all platforms -- including Mac OS X -- are vulnerable to an Javascript exploit that can crash Acrobat. [Correction, per The Register and Shadowserver the vulnerability is not in Javascript per se but the circulating exploits use Javascript to leverage the actual flaw. Thanks to Adam Engst for the heads-up.] The same approach could possibly give an attacker unrestricted access to the target system. More from Download Squad on the scope of the problem; Adobe and others are reporting that there are already exploits in the wild for this problem.

Mac users have, of course, a very solid option for handling PDF files other than Acrobat: Preview, installed on every Mac OS X machine. You can also turn off Javascript support in the Acrobat preferences to lock out exploits from proceeding beyond crashing the app to actually doing widespread damage.

To change the default handler for PDF files, select any PDF file in the Finder and then select Get Info from the File menu. Under the Open With section, select Preview.app and then click Change All.