There’s a brief announcement on the Adobe Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) Blog stating that Adobe is looking into reports of a new exploit for their Reader software. No further details are provided. Since this exploit is apparently being seen in the wild, we recommend extreme caution when opening PDF documents from unknown or untrusted sources. Better yet, switch to a different PDF reader like Foxit, thereby avoiding the dangers inherent in using Adobe Reader.
Update:Ars Technica has the details. Apparently the vulnerability was reported by the security company FireEye, and attacks based on the vulnerability have been seem in the wild. Further, the vulnerability is important because security in version 11 of the Reader software was supposedly much more difficult to circumvent.
Update 2: There’s a new post on the Security Advisory blog for Adobe Reader and Acrobat that covers this issue.
Update 3:Ars Technica points out that Adobe Reader 11 would protect users from this vulnerability, if its security settings were actually enabled by default (which they aren’t). On learning this, I immediately made the required changes to my installation of Reader, enabling Protected View. Check the bottom of this post for the procedure.
Update 4:Adobe announced that updates for the vulnerabilities in Reader will be made available some time during the coming week.
Enabling Protected View in Adobe Reader 11
Start Adobe Reader.
From the menu, select Edit > Preferences.
Select Security (Enhanced) from the list on the left.
In the Sandbox Protections section at the top, make sure that the setting for Protected View is All files.
Version 24.0.1312.70 of Google’s web browser contains the latest version of Adobe Flash.
Update: Something funny going on here. The announcement linked above states that version 24.0.1312.70 is actually for the Linux platform. It goes on to say: “This release contains an update to Flash (11.6.602.167). This Flash update has been pushed to Windows, Mac, and Chrome Frame platforms through component updater.” But what is the ‘component updater’, and how will it affect the version number of Chrome in Windows? There’s nothing on the Chrome support site about it. My own Chrome installation reports itself as being up to date at version 24.0.1312.57. Has Flash been updated in my installation or not? How can I determine what version of Flash is running in Chrome? Comments below the announcement linked above show other users similarly confused. Meanwhile, another new version was announced on Feb 14: “The Stable channel has been updated to 24.0.1312.71 for Windows Standalone Enterprise. This build contains an updated Flash (11.6.602.167).” That version at least seems to be targeted at Windows, but what is “Windows Standalone Enterprise”? It contains the same version of Flash as 24.0.1312.70, but again my version of Chrome reports that it is up to date at 24.0.1312.57. Not much we can do at this point except wait for Google to sort out this mess.
It’s that time again: time to patch your Windows systems. This month there are twelve bulletins, addressing a total of 57 vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer and other Microsoft software.
Microsoft and Symantec, working with law enforcement authorities in the US and Spain, have disabled another botnet. The Bamital botnet first appeared in 2009, and at its height, included as many as 1.8 million computers.
User computers became infected with the Bamital malware through drive-by web-based infections (often from porn sites) and corrupted software downloads.
Infected computers were used to generate revenue for the perpetrators by generating or redirecting traffic to specific web sites.
Updates this month comprise twelve bulletins, five of them critical, that address 57 vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer and other Microsoft software.
On a related note: is it just me, or are the release notes for Firefox kind of messed up? Looking at the page for the latest release, I notice the following:
The version being discussed doesn’t appear anywhere at the top of the page, in any headings, or in the page title.
The first reference to the version is in the list of issues fixed in the What’s New section, but issues fixed in previous versions appear as well.
What does appear in the page headings is “Notes (First offered to release channel users on February 5, 2013)”. Apparently this is telling us that the version being discussed was released on that date. But again, it’s not clear what version we’re talking about, unless you look at the page’s URL, which includes “18.0.2”.
The link to a complete list of changes takes us to a page that lists changes going back several months, in previous versions. It’s a massive list, again with no version information, despite being on a page with a specific version in the URL.
Comparing the complete list of changes for version 18.0.2 with the the list for version 18.0.1 shows that they are in fact identical. You have to go back to version 17.x to find a different list.
Confusing. To make matters worse, among all the Mozilla blogs, press releases and other related Firefox information on the Mozilla site, I’ve so far been unable to find a mailing list, feed or any other resource that simply announces new Firefox versions. I have to find out about new versions from SANS.
Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
It’s a worthwhile read, and describes different types of phishing attacks and what you can do to protect yourself from them.
boot13