handyfloss

I have read in Kriptopolis some posts about new PDF exploits (in Spanish). The articles say that web broser PDF plugins are vulnerable, dedicated PDF readers are also vulnerable, and new exploits may be created. The Kriptopolis site keeps on talking about new vulnerabilities in PDF documents, and how they affect all platforms. Do they?

If you go to the SecurityFocus site, where they cover the new, you can download an example PDF, that exploits this vulnerability. If you open it with any (vulnerable) PDF reader, the program will freeze, and the CPU usage will go over the roof.

Well, bold as I am, I did the test. I opened it with Acroread 7.0 for GNU/Linux and… it froze, and… the CPU usage hit the roof. I could not Ctrl-C the beast, and a kill would not kill it. Fortunately, a kill -9 did the job :^(

Now, I tried Evince:

Heracles[~/Downloads]: evince MOAB-06-01-2007.pdf
Error (3659): Illegal character ')'
Error (0): PDF file is damaged - attempting to reconstruct xref table...
Segmentation fault

and Xpdf:

Heracles[~/Downloads]: xpdf MOAB-06-01-2007.pdf
Error (3659): Illegal character ')'
Error (0): PDF file is damaged - attempting to reconstruct xref table...
Segmentation fault

Ta-chan!! Yes, they crash, but refusing to open the damned thing! They both complain, and don’t fall for it.

Perhaps it’s worth reminding the reader that Evince and Xpdf are free software, whereas Acroread is not. Acroread is merely free of charge, but not free as in freedom.