PDF trojan exploits Adobe flaw

Reader/Acrobat vulnerability targeted day after patch release.

A vulnerability in

Adobe

‘s popular PDF-viewing software

Adobe Reader

and editing suite

Acrobat

,

first reported a month ago

, was patched on Monday in an update released two weeks after the company

issued a workaround

to minimise exposure. The following day, PDFs containing exploits for the vulnerability were seen being spammed out in targeted attacks on businesses.

The spams contain PDF documents posing as bills or invoices, and once run, the trojan code (dubbed ‘

Trojan.Pidief.A

‘ by

Symantec

and ‘

EXPL_Pidief.B

‘ by

Trend Micro

) accesses vulnerable systems, disables the

Windows

firewall and downloads further trojans to complete the system penetration.

The vulnerability is thought only to affect users of

Windows XP

and

Internet Explorer 7

. Readers are advised to apply the update, available from

Adobe


here

, and ensure all software including anti-virus is kept fully up to date and patched. More details on the attack are on the

Symantec

blog

here

.

Posted on 24 October 2007 by

Virus Bulletin