SANS ISC: PDF Arbitrary Code Execution - vulnerable by design.

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SANS ISC InfoSec Forums

Didier Stevens, who probably knows the PDF format better then most and has written some great PDF analysis tools, published a very interesting and concerning blog post [1].

In this post, he outlines how PDFs can be used to execute code. Nothing new you may say... plenty of exploits have done this in the past. This is different: He is not using a vulnerability, but a feature. Evidently, PDFs have the ability to execute code by design. Since this is not an implementation, but a design problem, various PDF readers are vulnerable. In his blog, Didier show a video of the exploit using Adobe's PDF reader. Adobe's reader will show a warning and ask the user for permission. However, the wording of this warning may be changed by the attacker. Foxit, a popular alternative to Adobe's reader, will show no warning.

At this point, Didier does not provide a public PoC exploit. However, he says he is in contact with vendors.

[1] http://blog.didierstevens.com

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Johannes B. Ullrich, Ph.D.
SANS Technology Institute
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