The British security researcher who has disclosed two critical flaws in popular media files in the past week said yesterday that a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Inc.'s pervasive PDF files could be exploited to snatch control of Windows XP systems.
Petko Petkov, a penetration tester who recently disclosed a zero-day flaw in Apple Inc.'s QuickTime a week ago and a similarly critical bug in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media Player, now says that Adobe System Inc.'s Acrobat Reader files harbor a serious vulnerability.
The PDF zero-day beats the media file flaws hands down, said Petkov. "Adobe Acrobat/Reader PDF documents can be used to compromise your Windows box," he said on his blog today. "Completely!!! Invisibly and unwillingly!!! All it takes is to open a PDF document or stumble across a page, which embeds one."

http://www.computerworld.com/action/articl...ticleId=9038099

This post has been edited by dserban: Sep 22 2007, 06:54 AM

Interesting, this can be serious, but unfortunately I get a 503 on the link you provided, maybe he got much visits lately and his server went down

Oh it seems to work and his blog seems to work too now.

This post has been edited by Quatrux: Sep 22 2007, 06:42 AM

So is it affecting only Adobe Reader users or does ALL PDF files opened on Windows XP Service Pack 2 have this security risk?

I actually don't see the use of PDF over plain old HTML files. If you prefer use Microsoft Word, then use DOC/DOCX, why PDF anyways?

The way i see it is that it provides a published uneditable version of something, useful for documentations and whatnot.

I usually don't read PDF's anyway, only the occasional stuff but otherwise all the info i need is on forums there's no need for me to download them.
If i need a copy of what i'm reading i'll just copy/paste into notepad or something, easy and done.

-HellFire

is it like adobes actual fault or just a plain thing with PDF's?

ive always liked PDF's for everything, if im reading something big on the internet i always look for a PDF first.

although since ive been using them like ever since i got my first computer, i dont think ill stop using them, they havent done anything before, i dont think, lol!

I agree 100%, PDF's are a great source of information, because the nature of "Document", this means invaluable quality. The only drawback is the weight of files, there must be some way to interactively print a sort of any HTML pages to a single PDF...

Blessings!

My scanner, as a lot of others, has a "pdf" button. When somebody asks me a copy of a document, my last phone bill or a business card, I put the paper on my scanner, it creates a pdf file, and I simply send the pdf file by mail.
If this trick is interesting for a lot of people (like a nice postcard), I put it on my website. So, each guy who wants to see the postcard opens a pdf file.
I'm not very sure that today we can survive without reading pdf files. I feel it like not being connected to the Internet because it's dangerous. Of course, it's dangerous, but can we continue leaving in our world without it ?

Erm, for images and stuff, JPEG/PNG/GIF/SVG and even BMP for Windows users is fine (although BMP may be a bit bloated).

For text/images, plain old (X)HTML is great. For those office application users, DOC/DOCX/ODT is great for storing these kinds of documents.

I honestly don't know what is so great about PDF, they are slow to load in Adobe Reader, and even slower if loaded in Firefox/Internet Explorer.

PDF is really great, even though I agree that they are slow, but with current versions they load faster and scroll faster, if you just need a simple document, just use a document file, but PDF can do much more, in fact I usually publish PDF's if I can, do all my works with PDF's in the University, it is a portable document, you can read it on any OS, but of course a lot of things changed, it is as easy to read .doc files on Linux as on Windows, but like if you create files with OO, usually a lo of people don't have OO on Windows, just Word, the same is with most schools, colleges, universities, academies, libraries and offices etc. but most of them are able to read a PDF document.. Most of comics can be created as PDF's, Newspapers, Manuals, Books and etc.

hmmm...that is interesting...I wonder how quickly a fix for this will be out (or is there one already?) If I had to guess adobe is already aware of the issue and is fixing it as soon as they can.

Is it only for windows xp though? In that case is it microsoft's issue and not adobe's? (Sorry, I had trouble loading the original source because of the ads and it not letting me to the actual website)