{"id":70544,"date":"2013-02-14T12:45:58","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T10:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=70544"},"modified":"2013-02-14T13:05:51","modified_gmt":"2013-02-14T11:05:51","slug":"adobe-reader-acrobat-security-risk-investigated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/70544-adobe-reader-acrobat-security-risk-investigated.html","title":{"rendered":"Adobe Reader, Acrobat security risk investigated"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adobe Systems Inc<\/a> is investigating a report by a cybersecurity firm that hackers exploited previously unknown bugs in its Reader and Acrobat<\/a> software to launch sophisticated attacks on personal computers.<\/p>\n

FireEye<\/a>, a Silicon Valley company that helps businesses fight cyber attacks, told Reuters it obtained so-called PDF<\/a> files tainted with malicious software, which can take advantage of the newly discovered bugs.<\/p>\n

It declined to identify any victims of the attacks.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for Adobe said that the company is investigating the report, which surfaced late on Tuesday. She declined to elaborate.<\/p>\n

This has been a busy year so far for Adobe’s security team. In January, the company pushed out security updates to fix vulnerabilities in Reader, Acrobat<\/a> and Flash<\/a>, as well as a program known as ColdFusion that is used to build websites.<\/p>\n

Last week, it rushed out a fix for Flash<\/a> Player after security software maker Kaspersky Lab identified a critical bug that enabled hackers to install “back doors” and take control of PCs running on Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system<\/a> or Apple Inc’s Mac OS X.<\/p>\n

Adobe’s software has long been a popular target for hackers, who attack PCs by finding bugs in widely used programs that they can then exploit to insert viruses on computers. Experts estimate that Reader and Acrobat<\/a> programs for accessing PDF<\/a> documents and Flash<\/a> Player for accessing Internet content are installed on more than 1 billion PCs.<\/p>\n

Hackers exploiting the most recently discovered vulnerability use PDF<\/a> files to infect PCs, according to FireEye<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When the victim opens the PDF<\/a>, a visa application form appears onscreen, and a virus installs a covert communications channel with a remote computer known as a “command and control” server, which hackers use to control infected PCs, said Zheng Bu<\/a>, senior director of research at FireEye<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He said the virus also installs a third malicious file on the infected computer, but declined to elaborate.<\/p>\n

Adobe has yet to provide advice on how to protect PCs against attack. FireEye<\/a> said computer users should avoid opening unfamiliar PDFs, especially when coming from unknown sources.<\/p>\n

FireEye<\/a> said on its blog it has observed attacks on PCs running Adobe Reader 11, the most-recent version of the software, as well as Reader 9 and Reader 10.<\/p>\n

Adobe said on its own security blog that the issue also affected Acrobat<\/a> XI, the current version of the software used to create PDF<\/a> documents.<\/p>\n

(Reporting By Jim Finkle; Editing by Bernard Orr)<\/p>\n

More Adobe news<\/h3>\n

Apple, Microsoft, Adobe to explain high prices to Aussie parliament<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Firefox to block Java, Silverlight, Adobe Reader<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Adobe releases Game Developers Tools<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adobe is investigating reports that hackers exploited previously unknown bugs in its Reader and Acrobat software<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340871,"featured_media":70552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[36,2556,18198,18200],"class_list":["post-70544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-active","tag-adobe","tag-adobe-acrobat","tag-adobe-reader"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70544"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340871"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70554,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70544\/revisions\/70554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}