Block Adobe PDF Attacks Now

Less than 24 hours after Adobe plugged a group of critical holes in its Acrobat/Reader software, anti-virus vendor Symantec is reporting there are now attacks "in the wild" (i.e., the Internet at large) that take advantage of the just-patched vulnerabilities.

That means that getting the patch should now be pushed up to the top of your to do list.

A post on Symantec's Security Response Weblog puts it this way:

"One day later, we have discovered a new Trojan named Trojan.Pidief.A that actually exploits this vulnerability to compromise an unpatched computer. So far we have seen a fair number of emails containing this new Trojan in the wild. It is likely that Trojan.Pidief.A has been spammed out in targeted attacks on specific business organizations."

The Trojan is using a classic "social engineering" ploy to trick you into clicking on the infected Portable Document Format (PDF) file that arrives in e-mail. The e-mails have alarming subject lines like "invoice," "statement," or "bill." Of course, the idea is to push your panic buttons and make you think someone has stolen your identity or something similar.

In that moment, you're much more likely to click on the PDF file attachment to find out what's going on – which, of course, is what the bad guys want -- thus infecting yourself. The Trojan then downloads a "downloader" program to your PC. You can guess the rest.

Yesterday it was a good idea – now it's an imperative. Get the patched version and a discussion of the vulnerabilities at Adobe's Security Alert page.

You're only at risk, however, if you're running Windows XP with Internet Explorer 7. Windows Vista users are safe from attack.

As a side note, Microsoft yesterday released the latest edition of its Security Intelligence Report. And, in relation to this latest round of attacks, it makes the point that you can expect to see more of these in the near future.

According to a Microsoft press release about the report:

"The study also shows a 500 percent increase in trojan downloaders and droppers, malicious code used to install files such as trojans, password stealers, keyboard loggers and other malware on users’ systems."

As always, remember to think before you click. The bad guys want you to do the opposite and that's why they try to push your personal survival buttons.

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