A vulnerability has been discovered in Adobe Reader and Acrobat that may be exploited to run arbitrary code.
A critical vulnerability exists in the font parsing code of CoolType.dll. A vulnerable strcat call is used when parsing data within the “SING” table of a TrueType font. The vulnerability has been confirmed in versions 8.2.4 and 9.3.4 of both Reader and Acrobat. Older versions may also be affected. There have been reports of this vulnerability being actively exploited in the wild.
An attacker may use a specifically crafted PDF document to cause a crash or execute arbitrary code.
Apply an update
Adobe recommends all users upgrade to Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.4 or 8.2.5. APSB10-21 contains more details.
Force DEP/ASLR
Microsoft’s Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit may be used to mitigate the effects of the exploit. Further details can be found on Microsoft’s TechNet Blog.
Disable JavaScript in Adobe Reader and Acrobat
Disabling JavaScript prevents these vulnerabilities from being exploited and reduces attack surface. If this workaround is applied to updated versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat, it may protect against future vulnerabilities.
To disable JavaScript in Adobe Reader:
The installer for Adobe Reader and Acrobat configures Internet Explorer to automatically open PDF files without any user interaction. This behavior can be reverted to the safer option of prompting the user by importing the following as a .REG file:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00`` `` [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AcroExch.Document.7] "EditFlags"=hex:00,00,00,00
Disable the displaying of PDF documents in the web browser
Preventing PDF documents from opening inside a web browser reduces attack surface. If this workaround is applied to updated versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat, it may protect against future vulnerabilities.
To prevent PDF documents from automatically being opened in a web browser with Adobe Reader:
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Updated: September 14, 2010
Affected
We have not received a statement from the vendor.
We are not aware of further vendor information regarding this vulnerability.
Group | Score | Vector |
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Base | ||
Temporal | ||
Environmental |
This document was written by Jared Allar.
CVE IDs: | CVE-2010-2883 |
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Severity Metric: | 61.51 Date Public: |
blog.metasploit.com/2010/09/return-of-unpublished-adobe.html
blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2010/09/10/use-emet-2-0-to-block-the-adobe-0-day-exploit.aspx
community.websense.com/blogs/securitylabs/archive/2010/09/10/brief-analysis-on-adobe-reader-sing-table-parsing-vulnerability-cve-2010-2883.aspx
secunia.com/advisories/41340
www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb10-21.html