Fairly wide-spread attacks based on the latest vulnerability in Adobe PDF Reader have been spotted by Symantec, they appear to be variants on old attacks but still can be very effective.

It’s not the first time this has happened, back in February 2009 Hackers targeted a 0-day exploit in PDF Reader.

With one variant of this current attack seeing 34,000 detections on Symantec’s network alone, it could be considered fairly widespread.

A week before Adobe is scheduled to patch a critical vulnerability in its popular PDF software, hackers are actively exploiting the bug with both targeted and large-scale attacks, a security researcher said today.

The SANS Institute’s Internet Storm Center (ISC) reported Monday that they’d received samples of a new rigged PDF document that hijacked PCs using a bug Adobe acknowledged Dec. 14 . Later last month, Adobe said it would not patch the bug until Jan. 12. In his write-up of the sample, ISC analyst Bojan Zdrnja called the attack PDF “sophisticated” and its use of egg-hunt shellcode “sneaky.”

“Egg-hunt shellcode” is a term for a multi-stage payload used when the hacker can’t determine where in a process’ address space the code will end up.

Today, Joshua Talbot, security intelligence manager at Symantec, confirmed that the malicious PDF exploited the Adobe Reader and Acrobat vulnerability, but unlike Zdrnja, said it wasn’t out of the ordinary. “It’s not particularly novel or sophisticated,” Talbot said.

It seems the solution is the same as it has always been, disable JavaScript support in PDF Reader. But honestly, how many non-tech savvy users will do that? Or even know HOW to do that?

Mine recommendation of course is always to use Foxit PDF Reader and avoid these issues all together.

Which I have of course recommended since 2008 back when Adobe PDF Reader was getting pwned 2 years ago.

All the maker of the recently-discovered exploit did, Talbot added, was take code published in a 2004 research paper and make minor modifications. “These techniques aren’t new or clever, but the same things that all attackers are doing,” Talbot argued.

Although the malicious PDF described by ISC has been seen in only limited numbers — designed for high-profile targets, such as company executives or personnel with access to network passwords — Symantec has monitored bigger attacks exploiting the PDF bug. One attack generated more than 34,000 detections on Symantec’s global detection network, peaking on Dec. 31 before falling sharply.

“We’re definitely seeing activity out there, since the vulnerability is unpatched,” said Talbot. When asked to put that attack on the size scale, Talbot answered, “That puts it in the class of being actively exploited. It shows that there’s both going on … that attackers are crafting one-off exploits for their own purposes, and that there are people who are trying to distribute exploits to as many people as possible.”

Hopefully Adobe will pull the patch forward seen as though this is being actively exploited and push the patch out to users ASAP.

It’s currently stated that Adobe will release the patch on January 12th at their support site, which thankfully isn’t too far off.

Perhaps they take testing seriously so their patch cycle will naturally be delayed.

Source: Network World

Another flaw in the Adobe product suite! It seems like PDF is turning into a complex animal, complexity of course always brings more security issues.

It was only back in February last year when there was a bug in Adobe Reader, and almost exactly a year later another one.

This time it’s a zero-day just hit and it is being actively exploited, with the worrying statement made that the fix will come in the ‘following weeks‘.

Hackers are targeting a zero-day vulnerability affecting Adobe Reader and Acrobat with malicious PDF files. Adobe officials say a fix for the issue will be available for Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat in the coming weeks.

Hackers have once again turned to PDF files to spread their wares, this time assaulting a zero-day flaw affecting Adobe Reader and Acrobat.

Fortunately, the unpatched bug is on the company’s radar, and fixes for Adobe Reader 9 and Acrobat 9 are slated to be available March 11. Updates for earlier versions will come later, company officials said in an advisory.

The bug is due to an error in the parsing of certain structures in PDF files. If exploited successfully, the bug could allow a hacker to take complete control of a vulnerable system.

Ok March 11th, only about 3 weeks to get a fix for a potentially very serious problem. Allowing complete control over the system, with the majority of people still using the Administrator account to user their computers on a day-to-day basis – that’s not good.

I don’t see how patch management will help here either, the patch won’t be out until 3 weeks after the exploit has become public. With attacks being targeted initially, and becoming more wide spread I would have thought immediate patching would have been more suitable.

“In parsing a specially-crafted embedded object, a bug in the reader allowed the attacker to overwrite memory at an arbitrary location,” blogged McAfee researcher Geok Meng Ong. “The attacks, found in the field, use the infamous heap spray method via JavaScript to achieve control of code execution.”

“While the distribution of this exploit thus far appears to be targeted, new variants are expected as more information is made public,” the researcher continued. “As with the Conficker experience, the lack of good patch management is a very worrying trend that deserves more attention from IT security practitioners. Adobe is expected to release a patch very soon.”

In the meantime, security researchers at the Shadowserver Foundation recommend users consider disabling JavaScript. Symantec also recommended Adobe users keep their antivirus up-to-date.

“While we continue to investigate this issue, customers are advised to follow best practices and only open email attachments from people they trust,” blogged Symantec researcher Patrick Fitzgerald. “Enabling DEP (Data Execution Prevention) for Adobe Reader will also help prevent this type of attack.”

There are some measures to can take to combat the problem, if you’re using Adobe on a corporate network you might want to think about pushing out some changes via Group Policy.

And well once again, another reason to use Foxit! PDF Reader.

Source: eWeek

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