Adobe Reader | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Threat actors are increasingly mimicking legitimate applications like Skype, Adobe Reader, and VLC Player as a means to abuse trust relationships and increase the likelihood of a successful social engineering attack. Other most impersonated legitimate apps by icon include 7-Zip, TeamViewer, CCleaner, Microsoft Edge, Steam, Zoom, and WhatsApp, an analysis from VirusTotal has revealed. "One of the simplest social engineering tricks we've seen involves making a malware sample seem a legitimate program," VirusTotal  said  in a Tuesday report. "The icon of these programs is a critical feature used to convince victims that these programs are legitimate." It's no surprise that threat actors resort to a variety of approaches to compromise endpoints by tricking unwitting users into downloading and running seemingly innocuous executables. This, in turn, is primarily achieved by taking advantage of genuine domains in a bid to get around IP-based firewall defenses...

Adobe has released  Patch Tuesday updates  for the month of May with fixes for multiple vulnerabilities spanning 12 different products, including a zero-day flaw affecting Adobe Reader that's actively exploited in the wild. The list of updated applications includes Adobe Experience Manager , Adobe InDesign , Adobe Illustrator , Adobe InCopy , Adobe Genuine Service , Adobe Acrobat and Reader, Magento , Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop Application, Adobe Media Encoder , Adobe After Effects , Adobe Medium, and Adobe Animate. In a security bulletin, the company  acknowledged  it received reports that the flaw "has been exploited in the wild in limited attacks targeting Adobe Reader users on Windows." Tracked as CVE-2021-28550, the zero-day concerns an arbitrary code execution flaw that could allow adversaries to execute virtually any command on target systems. While the targeted attacks took aim at Windows users of Adobe Reader, the issue affects both Windows and macO...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

Adobe today released its monthly software updates to patch a total of 87 security vulnerabilities in its Adobe Acrobat and Reader, Flash Player and Media Encoder, most of which could lead to arbitrary code execution attacks or worse. None of the flaws patched this month in Adobe products has been found exploited in the wild. Out of 87 total flaws, a whopping number of vulnerabilities (i.e., 84 in total) affect Adobe Acrobat and Reader applications alone, where 42 of them are critical and rest 42 are important in severity. Upon successful exploitation, all critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat and Reader software lead to arbitrary code execution, allowing attackers to take complete control over targeted systems. Adobe has released updated versions of Acrobat and Reader software for Windows and macOS operating systems to address these security vulnerabilities. The update for Adobe Flash Player , which will receive security patch updates until the end of 2020, comes this...

Good morning readers, it's Patch Tuesday again—the day of the month when Adobe and Microsoft release security patches for their software. Adobe just released its monthly security updates to address a total of 40 security vulnerabilities in several of its products, including Flash Player, Adobe Acrobat and Reader, and Shockwave Player. According to an advisory, Adobe Acrobat and Reader applications for Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS operating systems are vulnerable to a total 21 vulnerabilities, 11 of which have been rated as critical in severity. Upon successful exploitation, all critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat and Reader software lead to arbitrary code execution, allowing attackers to take complete control over targeted systems. Remaining ten vulnerabilities in the most widely used PDF reader are all rated as important and could lead to information disclosure. If your system hasn't yet detected the availability of the new update automatically, you sh...

Welcome back! Adobe has today released its monthly security updates to address a total of 75 security vulnerabilities across its various products, 71 of which resides in Adobe Acrobat and Reader alone. February 2019 patch Tuesday updates address several critical and important vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, Adobe Coldfusion, Creative Cloud Desktop Application, and Adobe Flash Player for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Chrome OS. According to the advisory released today, 43 out of 71 vulnerabilities addressed by Adobe in Acrobat and Reader are rated as critical in severity, most of which could lead to arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user upon successful exploitation. The update also includes a permanent fix for a critical, publicly disclosed zero-day vulnerability (CVE 2019-7089) impacting Adobe Reader that could allow remote attackers to steal targeted Windows NTLM hash passwords just by tricking victims into opening a specially crafted PDF fi...

I hope you had biggest, happiest and craziest New Year celebration, but now it's time to come back at work and immediately update your systems to patch new security flaws that could exploit your computer just by opening a PDF file. Adobe has issued an out-of-band security update to patch two critical vulnerabilities in the company's Acrobat and Reader for both the Windows and macOS operating systems. Though the San Jose, California-based software company did not give details about the vulnerabilities, it did classify the security flaws as critical since they allow privilege escalation and arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user. Both the vulnerabilities were reported to Adobe by security researchers--Abdul-Aziz Hariri and Sebastian Apelt—from Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI). Critical Adobe Acrobat and Reader Vulnerabilities The first vulnerability, reported by Apelt and identified as CVE-2018-16011, is a use-after-free bug that can lead...

Adobe is closing out this year with its December Patch Tuesday update to address a massive number of security vulnerabilities for just its two PDF apps—more than double the number of what Microsoft patched this month for its several products. Adobe today released patches for 87 vulnerabilities affecting its Acrobat and Reader software products for both macOS and Windows operating systems, of which 39 are rated as critical and 48 important in severity. The security update comes less than a week after Adobe released patches for a critical zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2018-15982) in Flash Player that was actively being exploited in a targeted attack targeting a Russian state health care institution. The critical vulnerabilities addressed today in Acrobat and Reader include three heap-overflow bugs, five out-of-bounds write flaws, two untrusted pointer dereference issues, two buffer errors, and 24 use-after-free bugs. Upon successful exploitation, all of the above critical vulner...

Adobe has released security patches for a total 112 vulnerabilities in its products, most of which have a higher risk of being exploited. The vulnerabilities addressed in this month's patch Tuesday affect Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Connect, Adobe Acrobat, and Reader. None of the security vulnerabilities patched this month were either publicly disclosed or found being actively exploited in the wild. Adobe Flash Player (For Desktops and Browsers) Security updates include patches for two vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player for various platforms and application, as listed below. One of which has been rated critical (CVE-2018-5007), and successful exploitation of this "type confusion" flaw could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the targeted system in the context of the current user. This flaw was discovered and reported to Adobe by willJ of Tencent PC Manager working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative. Withou...

Security researchers at Microsoft have unveiled details of two critical and important zero-day vulnerabilities that had recently been discovered after someone uploaded a malicious PDF file to VirusTotal, and get patched before being used in the wild . In late March, researchers at ESET found a malicious PDF file on VirusTotal, which they shared with the security team at Microsoft "as a potential exploit for an unknown Windows kernel vulnerability." After analyzing the malicious PDF file, the Microsoft team found that the same file includes two different zero-day exploits—one for Adobe Acrobat and Reader, and the other targeting Microsoft Windows. Since the patches for both the vulnerabilities were released in the second week of May, Microsoft released details of both the vulnerabilities today, after giving users enough time to update their vulnerable operating systems and Adobe software. According to the researchers, the malicious PDF including both the zero-days e...

Adobe has just released new versions of its Acrobat DC, Reader and Photoshop CC for Windows and macOS users that patch 48 vulnerabilities in its software. A total of 47 vulnerabilities affect Adobe Acrobat and Reader applications, and one critical remote code execution flaw has been patched in Adobe Photoshop CC. Out of 47, Adobe Acrobat and Reader affect with 24 critical vulnerabilities —categorized as Double Free, Heap Overflow, Use-after-free, Out-of-bounds write, Type Confusion, and Untrusted pointer dereference—which if exploited, could allow arbitrary code execution in the context of the targeted user. Rest of the 23 flaws, including Security Bypass, Out-of-bounds read, Memory Corruption, NTLM SSO hash theft, and HTTP POST newline injection via XFA submission, are marked as important and can lead to information disclosure or security bypass. The above-listed vulnerabilities impact the Windows and macOS versions of Acrobat DC (Consumer and Classic 2015), Acrobat Rea...

Are you using Foxit PDF Reader? If yes, then you need to watch your back. Security researchers have discovered two critical zero-day security vulnerabilities in Foxit Reader software that could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code on a targeted computer, if not configured to open files in the Safe Reading Mode. The first vulnerability (CVE-2017-10951) is a command injection bug discovered by researcher Ariele Caltabiano working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), while the second bug (CVE-2017-10952) is a file write issue found by Offensive Security researcher Steven Seeley. An attacker can exploit these bugs by sending a specially crafted PDF file to a Foxit user and enticing them to open it. Foxit refused to patch both the vulnerabilities because they would not work with the "safe reading mode" feature that fortunately comes enabled by default in Foxit Reader. "Foxit Reader & PhantomPDF has a Safe Reading Mode which is enabled by d...

After a week delay, Adobe has finally pushed out critical security updates for its frequently-attacked Reader and Acrobat PDF software packages to patch serious vulnerabilities that could lead to computers being compromised. The new versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat released Tuesday for both Windows and Macintosh computers address eight vulnerabilities, five of which could allow for remote code execution . The remaining three vulnerabilities involve a sandbox bypass vulnerability that can be exploited to escalate an attacker's privileges on Windows, a denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability related to memory corruption, and a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw that only affects the programs on the Mac platform. According to Adobe's advisory , applying the patches will involve a system restart. The affected versions are: Adobe Reader XI (11.0.08) and earlier 11.x versions for Windows Adobe Reader XI (11.0.07) and earlier 11.x versions for Macintosh Adobe Reade...

Adobe has released security updates to fix seven vulnerabilities in its Flash and Air platforms and one in its Reader and Acrobat which, according to the company, is being exploited by attackers in wild " ...in limited, isolated attacks targeting Adobe Reader users on Windows. " The vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to " take control of affected systems " marked critical by the company. A new, out-of-band patch addresses a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2014-0546) in Adobe Reader and Acrobat that offers an attacker the possibility to bypass sandbox protection and has been leveraged in "limited, isolated attacks" against Windows users. " These updates resolve a sandbox bypass vulnerability that could be exploited to run native code with escalated privileges on Windows, " Adobe warned. The lone vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat and Reader was reported by Kaspersky Lab Global Research and Analysis Team director Costin Raiu and V...

Microsoft has released its advance notification for the month of May 2014 patch Tuesday security updates, that will patch a total of eight flaws issued next Tuesday , May 13. Among the eight vulnerabilities two of them are rated critical, rest all are rated important in severity. Just a week before, Microsoft provided an 'out-of-band security update' for all versions of Internet Explorer (IE) that were affected by the zero-day vulnerability , and since IE6 for Windows XP retired last month, even though it received patches for IE6 zero-day flaw. But, Microsoft has no plan to make any such accommodations this time. 13th MAY 2014 - MICROSOFT PATCH TUESDAY  Next week the security updates will include fixes for vulnerabilities including the critical one in Internet Explorer (IE), along with .NET Framework, Windows, Office and SharePoint for all versions of Windows except Windows XP.  " Our existing policy remains in place, and as such, Microsoft no longer supports...

If you're one of the 400 million Android users out there who have installed Adobe Reader app that helps you to view PDF documents on mobile devices, then you should immediately update your app from Google Play Store. Adobe has released an updated Adobe Reader 11.2.0 version to addresses an important vulnerability that could be exploited to gain 'remote code execution' ability on the affected system. According to the Adobe  advisory , vulnerability ( CVE-2014-0514 ) resides in the implementation of JavaScript APIs on Adobe Reader 11.2 that could be exploited to execute arbitrary code within Adobe Reader. Adobe vulnerability discovered by security researcher  Yorick Koster of Securify BV , claimed that an attacker can create a specially crafted PDF file containing malicious JavaScript code that triggers when the victim will try to open it using affected Adobe Reader for Android Operating System. Multiple attack vectors are available to deploy a malicio...

A year back, Security Researchers from the Antivirus firm Kaspersky found a sophisticated piece of malware which they dubbed as ' MiniDuke ', designed specifically to collect and steal strategic insights and highly protected political information, which is a subject to states' security. Now, once again the MiniDuke virus is spreading in wild via an innocent looking but fake PDF documents related to Ukraine , while the researcher at F-Secure were browsing the set of extracted decoy documents from a large batch of potential MiniDuke Samples. " This is interesting considering the current crisis in the area ," Mikko Hypponen, the CTO of security research firm F-Secure, wrote on Tuesday. The Hacker News reported a year ago about the malicious malware that uses an exploit ( CVE-2013-0640 ) of the famous and actively used Adobe Reader . MiniDuke malware written in assembly language with its tiny file size (20KB), and uses hijacked Twitter accounts for Command ...

Microsoft has  released  11 Security Patch this Tuesday, including one for CVE-2013-5065  zero-day vulnerability, recently discovered Local privilege escalation vulnerability that could allow a hacker to launch an attack using corrupted TIFF images to take over victims' computers. FireEye researchers said they found the exploit in the wild being used alongside a PDF-based exploit against a patched Adobe Reader vulnerability. December's Patch Tuesday update bundle brings five bulletins ranked critical, including a patch for a vulnerability that could allow remote code execution in Internet Explorer and another remote code execution vulnerability in Office and Microsoft Server is also addressed. Other patches addressing remote code execution vulnerabilities in Lync, all versions of Office and Microsoft Exchange. All supported versions of Windows, from XP to RT and 8.1, are affected by at least one of the critical vulnerabilities. The Six S...

McAfee said it has found a vulnerability in Adobe Systems' Reader program that reveals when and where a PDF document is opened. The issue emerges when some users launch a link to another file path, which calls on a JavaScript application programming interface (API), while Reader alerts a user when they are going to call on a resource from another place. The issue is not a serious problem and does not allow for remote code execution, but McAfee does consider it a security problem and has notified Adobe. It affects every version of Adobe Reader, including the latest version, 11.0.2. " We have detected some PDF samples in the wild that are exploiting this issue. Our investigation shows that the samples were made and delivered by an 'email tracking service' provider. We don't know whether the issue has been abused for illegal or APT attacks ," wrote McAfee's Haifei Li. McAfee declined to reveal the details of the vulnerability as Adobe i...

Exploit kits are one of the dangerous cyber crime tool, where The Phoenix Exploit Kit is a good example of exploit packs used to exploit vulnerable software on the computers of unsuspecting Internet users. The Phoenix Exploit Kit is available for a base price of $2,200 in underground market by its malware author or developer.  Like other exploit kits , Phoenix also developed to exploit browser-based  vulnerabilities in outdated and insecure versions of browser plugins like Java, and Adobe Flash and Reader. Developer of Phoenix is known by nickname AlexUdakov on several forums. According to new investigation report published by  krebsonsecurity , AlexUdakov was also member of a forum called Darkode , whose administrator accounts were compromised few weeks before and that the intruders were able to gain access to private communications of the administrators.  Intruders was able to view full profiles and database of Dar...

FireEye researchers recently came across a zero-day security flaw in Adobe Reader that's being actively exploited in the wild. The zero-day vulnerability is in Adobe PDF Reader 9.5.3, 10.1.5, 11.0.1 and earlier versions. According to researchers, once malware takes advantage of the flaw, its payload drops two dynamic-link libraries, or DLLs, which are application extensions used by executable files to perform a task. In this case, they allow the infected computer to communicate with a hacker-owned server. No additional details about the zero-day vulnerabilities have been publicly released, and but researchers with antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab have confirmed the exploit can successfully escape the Adobe sandbox. " We have already submitted the sample to the Adobe security team. Before we get confirmation from Adobe and a mitigation plan is available, we suggest that you not open any unknown PDF files ," said FireEye team. But until the vulnerability gets patched,...