How the Grinch Stole Christmas – with an Adobe Zero Day
Paul Henry - December 6th, 2011
Yet another dangerous Adobe Zero Day in the wild
Adobe has posted a Security Advisory for a Day Zero vulnerability that is currently actively targeting Adobe Reader 9.4.6 on the Windows platform. According to the advisory, the vulnerability (CVE-2011-2462) will be addressed first on the current target platform the week of December 12 and, because the risk is lower for Unix and Mac users, a patch will not be released there until the regularly scheduled patch cycle on January 12, 2012.
This vulnerability could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. Adobe further advises users who are still running Adobe Reader or Acrobat 9 and older versions to upgrade to Adobe Reader or AcrobatX, which is not impacted by the current issue.
As recent as 2009, Adopbe earned the title of “most hacked software of the year” when malicious PDF files accounted for more than 80% of all exploits for the year. Be on guard this holiday season – PDF files have long been a popular vehicle to transport obfuscated malware in Spear Phishing Attacks and this vulnerability makes that task even easier.
In light of the never ending stream of issues with Adobe Reader and Acrobat, users may want to consider achieving a little “security by obscurity” with any one of more than a dozen Adobe alternates for PC and Mobile platforms, such as:
Sumatra PDF
Foxit Reader
Cool PDF Reader
Nitro Reader
PDF-XChange Viewer
Skim
Quick PDF
Gnostice (multiple PDF tools)
eXpert PDF Reader
Evince
Okular
STDU Viewer
GoodReader
Chrome PDF Viewer Plug-In
ePDFView
Perfect PDF Reader
FREE Scanner
Free eBook &
Over 48% of IT Directors say that mobile devices represent the greatest network security threat.
[...] Microsoft, IT staff is dealing with the Zero Day Adobe vulnerability as previously discussed on the Lumension Blog. Adobe is only releasing a patch for the Windows versions of the issue because that is the [...]