Viruses/Worms News

Gumblar Trojan exploits Adobe Reader and Acrobat security hole

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

A security flaw in Adobe Reader and Acrobat is being actively exploited by cyber attackers with malicious PDFs. Security researchers at IBM's web security labs have seen a surge in attacks on this security vulnerability.

IBM researchers said on the Frequency X Blog that variants of the Gumblar Trojan are attacking security holes in Microsoft Office, web browser and Adobe products, but most of the attacks are aimed at Adobe Acrobat and Reader.

"Here in Managed Security Services, we've noticed a considerable elevation in our global hits on malicious PDF files," the IBM researchers said on the blog. "More specifically, the signature used to detect the latest Adobe Reader Remote Code Execution has picked up most of the activity."

Adobe disclosed the security vulnerabilities in its October 13 batch of security patches and recommends users of Adobe Reader 9.1.3 and Acrobat 9.1.3 and earlier versions update to Adobe Reader 9.2 and Acrobat 9.2.

The security bulletin from Adobe on the flaw said remote code execution could allow an attacker to take control of a user system if a victim opens a PDF file infected with the virus.