Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple Adobe Acrobat Reader DC Vulnerabilities

Discovered by Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos

Update 05/15/18: The CVE for TALOS-2018-0517 has been corrected below.

Overview

Today, Talos is releasing details of a new vulnerabilities within Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. Adobe Acrobat Reader is the most popular and most feature-rich PDF reader. It has a big user base, is usually a default PDF reader on systems and integrates into web browsers as a plugin for rendering PDFs. As such, tricking a user into visiting a malicious web page or sending a specially crafted email attachment can be enough to trigger this vulnerability.

A specific Javascript script embedded in a PDF file can cause the document ID field to be used in an unbounded copy operation leading to stack-based buffer overflow when opening a specially crafted PDF document in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC 2018.009.20044. This stack overflow can lead to return address overwrite which can result in arbitrary code execution. In order to trigger this vulnerability, the victim would need to open the malicious file or access a malicious web page.

TALOS-2018-0517 - Adobe Acrobat Reader DC Net.Discovery.queryServices Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2018-4996)

A specific Javascript script embedded in a PDF file can lead to a pointer to previously freed object to be reused when opening a PDF document in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC 2018.009.20044. With careful memory manipulation, this can potentially lead to sensitive memory disclosure or arbitrary code execution. In order to trigger this vulnerability, the victim would need to open the malicious file or access a malicious web page. Detailed vulnerability information can be found here.

TALOS-2018-0518 - Adobe Acrobat Reader DC ANFancyAlertImpl Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2018-4947)

A specific Javascript script embedded in a PDF file can lead to a pointer to previously freed object to be reused when opening a PDF document in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC 2018.009.20044. With careful memory manipulation, this can potentially lead to sensitive memory disclosure or arbitrary code execution. In order to trigger this vulnerability, the victim would need to open the malicious file or access a malicious web page. Detailed vulnerability information can be found here.

Known vulnerable versions

Adobe Acrobat Reader DC 2018.009.20044

Coverage

The following Snort Rules will detect exploitation attempts. Note that additional rules may be released at a future date and current rules are subject to change pending additional vulnerability information. For the most current rule information, please refer to your FireSIGHT Management Center or Snort.org.

Snort Rules: 45506-45507, 45521-45522