Article by George Norman

On 11 Mar 2009

Adobe has released an update for Adobe Reader 9.0 and Acrobat 9.0, software applications that were plagued by a zero-day security vulnerability that would allow a person with malicious intent to overwrite memory at an arbitrary location. The security holes, which McAfee reported were being exploited in the wild, albeit in a targeted manner, have been plugged with the release of Adobe Reader 9.1 and Acrobat 9.1.

Security Program Manager with Adobe, David Lenoe, comments: “Today, we posted the Adobe Reader 9.1 and Acrobat 9.1 update, which resolves the recent JBIG2 security issue (CVE-2009-0658), including the ‘no-click’ variant of the vulnerability. We encourage all Adobe Reader users to download and install the free Adobe Reader 9.1. We expect updates for Adobe Reader 7 and 8, and Acrobat 7 and 8, to be available by March 18. In addition, Adobe plans to make available Adobe Reader 9.1 for Unix by March 25.”


It must be said that two means of exploiting the Adobe Reader and Acrobat security holes were detected: the first one is by getting people to download malformed PDF files, and while a specially-crafted embedded object would be parsed, the attacker managed to gain control of code execution; the second one was even more malicious in that it would exploit the vulnerability without actually getting the user to open a PDF file.

The US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team) explains: “When Adobe Reader is installed on a system, it adds an IFilter that allows applications such as the Windows Indexing Service to index PDF files. If the Windows Indexing Service processes a malicious PDF file stored on the system, the vulnerability can be exploited. Exploitation using this technique can require little to no user interaction. In addition to adding an IFilter, the Adobe Acrobat and Reader installation process adds a Windows Explorer Shell Extension. If Windows Explorer displays a folder that contains a malicious PDF file, the vulnerability can be exploited. Exploitation using this technique also requires little to no user interaction.”

If you would like to get Adobe Reader 9.1, a download location is available here.
If you would like to get Acrobat 9.1 Standard and Pro, a download location is available here.



Tags: Adobe, Adobe Reader, Adobe Acrobat, Security

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