It was that long ago that a critical flaw in Flash put Android phones at risk. The core vulnerability exists in Flash but it’s being actively exploited in Adobe Reader via the usual pdf route.

The vulnerability exists across all OS versions (including Android), but as usual the active exploitation seems to be taking place on the Windows platform.

Adobe has confirmed reports that yet another unpatched vulnerability in the latest versions of its ubiquitous software is being actively exploited to infect end users with data-stealing malware.

The vulnerability exists in Adobe’s Reader document viewer and Flash Media Player for Windows, OS X and Unix operating systems, Adobe warned on Thursday. According to independent researchers, it is being exploited in the wild against Reader for Windows to install a nasty trojan known as Wisp, which according to Microsoft, steals sensitive user data and installs a backdoor on compromised systems.

The vulnerability itself resides in Adobe’s Flash Player, which is available as stand alone software and is also embedded into Reader. According to researcher Mila Parkour of the Contagio Malware Dump blog, poisoned PDF documents are circulating that drop two malicious binaries onto Windows machines that open the document files.

A screenshot identified the two files as nsunday.exe and nsunday.dll. A Virus Total scan showed just 15 of 42 antivirus programs were detecting the malicious EXE. She didn’t say whether the attacks succeed against more recent versions of the OS, which Microsoft has designed to withstand many of the most common types of exploits.

This vector comes to pass as Flash player is also embedded into Adobe Reader, so by using a malicious PDF file with the AuthPlay exploit – they can trigger the Flash player flaw and drop malware into the OS.

There is information on how to disable the AuthPlay functionality at the bottom of the Adobe advisory:

Security Advisory for Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader and Acrobat

Basically you need to go to the Adobe Reader directory and delete the AuthPlayLib.bundle (Windows/Mac OSX) or libauthplay.so.0.0.0. (linux) file.

Adobe said it planned to patch the vulnerability in Flash during the week of November 9 and in Reader during the week of November 15. The schedule is puzzling, since Reader has been confirmed to be under attack and Flash has not been confirmed.

In the meantime, users can protect themselves by using an alternate document viewer, such as Foxit. For those who must use Reader, Adobe said they can mitigate attacks by removing functionality known as AuthPlay, by following the instructions near the bottom of this advisory. Adobe provided no temporary measures Flash users can follow.

It’s been a bad couple of years for Adobe’s security team, which has gotten repeatedly hammered by critical vulnerabilities that are exploited by criminals to install malware on users’ machines. Three weeks ago, the company issued a fix for a security flaw in Reader that was also under attack by a highly sophisticated exploit. Last month, Adobe fixed a critical vulnerability in Flash that was also being used to compromise end user computers.

Adobe is also in the process of developing a patch for a code-execution bug in its Shockwave Player. By many researchers’ reckoning, Reader is among the world’s most exploited applications, in close competition with Oracle’s Java framework and, of course, various Microsoft programs.

From recent attacks it seems Adobe Reader and Flash are amongst the most exploited applications, especially when it comes to serious vulnerabilities that allow code-execution.

The new generation Adobe Reader with Sandbox Feature can’t come soon enough.

There’s also more here:

Hackers exploit newest Flash zero-day bug

Source: The Register

At least! Adobe has sorted itself out and released patches for 17 critical vulnerabilities in their Reader and Acrobat applications. We reported back in January about Active Exploitation Of Unpatched PDF Vulnerabilities.

The latest slew of vulnerabilities has been actively exploited by hackers for at least the past month as detected in the wild by anti-virus companies. Many of the vulnerabilities were critical and could lead to remote code execution, especially combined with the recent flash exploits.

They had to step up as well and get the patches out fast because the code went public in June.

Adobe on Tuesday patched 17 critical vulnerabilities in Reader and Acrobat, including one that hackers have been using for nearly a month to commandeer PCs.

Another patch fixed a design flaw in the PDF format that attackers have been exploiting since April to dupe users into downloading a Trojan horse.

Adobe rushed the security update, which was originally slated to ship July 13, because exploit code went public and attacks using rigged PDF documents started showing on antivirus vendors’ reporting systems four weeks ago. The company patched Flash — hackers were tricking people into visiting malicious sites, then using the same bug to launch drive-by attacks — on June 10.

Sixteen of the 17 fixed flaws were labeled with the phrase “could lead to code execution” in Adobe’s advisory , the company’s way of saying that the bug was critical and could be used to hijack machines. Like Apple , and unlike Microsoft , Adobe doesn’t rate the severity of the vulnerabilities it patches. The seventeenth patch was also likely critical: “Arbitrary code execution has not been demonstrated, but may be possible,” the advisory read.

Looks like they’ve been having some serious problems, not just run of the mill exploits but problems with the very architecture and design of the Adobe software. Some of the biggest malware vectors for distribution last year came from Adobe Reader flaws.

And it has been happening in the wild, these flaws allowed malicious bot-net herders to peddle their wares and infect thousands of people.

Another fix addressed a design problem in the PDF document format that could be leveraged to con users into downloading malware. The bug, which was not strictly a security vulnerability, was first disclosed by Belgium researcher Didier Stevens in late March. Stevens demonstrated how a multi-stage attack using the PDF specification’s “/Launch” function could successfully exploit a fully-patched copy of Adobe Reader. Stevens also showed how a Reader warning could be changed to further fool users.

Hackers have been using Stevens’ technique in mass attacks to infect Windows PCs with bot Trojans.

With the updates to versions 9.3.3 and 8.2.3, Adobe changed Reader and Acrobat so that the /Launch function was disabled by default — in earlier editions it had been turned on — and fixed the bug in the warning dialog so hackers couldn’t modify it. “Today’s update includes changes to resolve the misuse of this command,” said Steve Gottwals, an Adobe group product manager, on a company blog . “We added functionality to block any attempts to launch an executable or other harmful objects by default. We also altered the way the existing warning dialog works to thwart the known social engineering attacks.”

Stevens confirmed the fixes in a post to his blog Tuesday. “Not only is the dialog box fixed, but the /Launch action is also disabled by default,” he said.

Five of the 17 bugs Adobe patched Tuesday were reported by Tavis Ormandy, the Google security engineer who was at the center of a brouhaha earlier this month after he publicly disclosed a vulnerability in Windows when Microsoft wouldn’t commit to a patching deadline.

Thankfully they’ve disabled the /Launch function by default now and fixed other bugs which were classified as critical. Incidentally 5 of the 17 bugs were reported by Tavis Ormandy the Google engineer.

That guy has quite a record for uncovering software based vulnerabilities.

Source: Network World

It seems like some recently patched flaws in Adobe Reader are actively being exploited in the wild, mostly via malicious banners from various sites.

Nothing particularly nasty is happening, but a trojan is being installed which can intercept search engine results. It’s definitely recommended to update to the latest version (8.1.2).

Personally I don’t have such a problem…as I use Foxit Reader instead, I find Adobe software incredibly bloated.

iDefense says that on Friday it saw the same banner ad tactic being used in the wild to install a Trojan horse program. That Trojan, dubbed “Zonebac,” disables various anti-virus products and modifies the victim’s search engine results. As of late Friday evening, the company claims that not a single commercial anti-virus product detects this thing as malicious.

While having some unwelcome program monkey with your search results may not sound like the worst thing to have happen to your PC, cyber criminals may find more nefarious purposes for this vulnerability.

It’s an interesting target for criminals because Adobe Reader has a truly enormous install base, yet it is one of those applications that so few people even think to update regularly. According to Adobe, more than 500 million copies of Adobe Reader have been distributed worldwide on 23 platforms and in 26 languages. The product also is distributed by the top 10 PC manufacturers.

That’s a lot of installs of Adobe Reader, I would hazard a guess that only 10-20% max are regularly updated to the latest version – that leaves an aweful lot of people vulnerable to some pwnage by these spammers.

You can work out the rest of the figures yourself..

Adobe released an updated security advisory for this patch late Thursday, but it didn’t contain many more details than the original advisory, other than to credit iDefense and several other security vendors for reporting vulnerabilities. iDefense said an internal researcher discovered the flaw, and that the company alerted Adobe back on Oct. 11, 2007. A spokesperson for Fortinet, also credited in the latest advisory, said researchers alerted Adobe to their findings on Nov. 1, 2007.

Steve Gottwals, senior product management for Adobe Reader, declined to say how many vulnerabilities this 8.1.2 patch fixed, but confirmed reports that the attackers were already exploiting the flaw.

At least Adobe aren’t too slow with updates, I wish their software wasn’t so hugely bloated, come one it’s a PDF reader how freaking huge does it have to be?

It just displays PDFs!

Well it has to be 22.4mb for the latest Windows version, compare that with Foxit Reader which is 2.2mb – much faster and does exactly the same things.

I know which I prefer.

Source: Security Fix