ID: IRCNE2012101646
Date: 2012-10-20
According to "techworld", Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat XI now come with new security features and an improved sandbox that will make the products harder to attack and exploit, according to Adobe.
The sandboxing feature known as the Protected Mode that was first introduced in Adobe Reader X proved successful at mitigating traditional PDF exploits.
"Since we added sandbox protection to Adobe Reader and Acrobat, we have not seen any exploits in the wild that break out of the Adobe Reader and Acrobat X sandbox," said Priyank Choudhury, a security researcher within Adobe's Secure Software Engineering Team.
However, this doesn't mean that the Adobe Reader X sandbox can prevent all types of attacks. For example, the sandbox was primarily designed to restrict write operations, not read ones, which means that potential attackers can steal sensitive information from a system after exploiting an Adobe Reader X vulnerability.
That's no longer a problem in Adobe Reader XI, Choudhury said. "In Adobe Reader XI, we have added data theft prevention capabilities by extending the sandbox to restrict read-only activities to help protect against attackers seeking to read sensitive information on the user's computer."
Stevens assumes that the new sandbox model in Adobe Reader XI prohibits the reading of files and registry keys, but hasn't had a chance to test it yet. If that's the case, it would be an important improvement, he said.
Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat already had a Protected View mode that have been enhanced in the new version. "Protected View behaves identically for Adobe Reader and Acrobat, whether viewing PDF files in the standalone product or in the browser," Choudhury said.
The support for Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), a memory-based anti-exploitation technology, has also been improved in the new Adobe Reader and Acrobat versions.
In addition, Adobe Reader and Acrobat XI benefit from a new PDF Whitelisting Framework that will allow system administrators, especially in enterprise environments, to enable specific functionality like JavaScript only for select PDF files, sites or hosts.
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