The big News out today – Adobe has some BIG issues with it's Flash and Acrobat Products!

Yup, it's true.  Multiple news sources – CNet, ZDNet, InfoTech, Channel Web – are reporting the announcement by Adobe warning of *Extremely Critical* security issues with the Flash and Acrobat product lines.  The affected products are:

• Adobe Reader v9.x and older
• Adobe Acrobat
• Adobe Flash Player

This affects Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, and Solaris systems on virtually every version of the products listed above!

The possible exceptions are:

• Adobe Flash Player 10.1, which is currently in beta
• Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat 8.x

These versions "do not appear to be vulnerable" to an exploit, Adobe said in its advisory.

Adobe further reports that attacks out on the internet are currently taking place.  PDF files may be infected with what Symantec is calling the Trojan.Pidief.  This Trojan works to deliver yet another Trojan (not yet named) that delivers a Backdoor piece of software to the victim.

Adobe has yet to release a patch to address the zero-day flaw. Until then, researchers suggest users deploy a workaround by deleting, renaming, or removing access to the authplay.dll file.  This file, which ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x, is a component used in the attack.  With this workaround in place, users will be subject to a non-exploitable crash or error message if they attempt to open a malicious PDF file that contains a Trojan.

Authplay.dll is found in these locations on Windows Systems:

• C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\authplay.dll – for Adobe Reader
• C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\authplay.dll – for Adobe Acrobat
• C:\Windows.old\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\authplay.dll on x64 Systems

According to the news articles, this file is responsible for allowing the Flash vulnerability to affect the Acrobat/Reader products use of the Flash product as it interacts with PDF files.

So get your antivirus updated and patched, rename the authplay.dll files on your systems, 

and …

Be Safe Out There – Till we talk again,

Patrick Seeber . President of Seeber Consulting . The Seeber Consulting Blog Any questions, please send me an email.

 

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