A critical vulnerability has been identified in Acrobat Reader and Acrobat Professionnel, and affect all platform, including MAc OS X and Linux. While waiting for a fix from Adobe, the company is already offering a procedure to block this vulnerability:
Issue
Adobe has confirmed a critical vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.2 and earlier versions that could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system as described in Security Advisory APSA09-07. Adobe recommends customers follow the mitigation guidance below, utilizing the Adobe Reader and Acrobat JavaScript Blacklist Framework, until a patch is available.
Overview
The Adobe Reader and Acrobat JavaScript Blacklist Framework provides customers granular control over the execution of specific JavaScript API calls. The purpose of the Framework is to allow Adobe to protect customers against attacks that target a specific JavaScript API call, like the one referenced in Security Advisory APSA09-07.
- On your Mac, go to Applications folder or location where you have (Adobe Reader or Acrobat) installed
- Right click on Adobe Reader or Acrobat Professional
- Click on Show Package Contents
- Expand Contents
- Expand MacOS
- Expand Preferences
- Make a backup of the FeatureLockDown file
- Right click on FeatureLockDown
- Open With TextEdit
- Just before the last >> add this line to the FeatureLockDown file
/JavaScriptPerms [ /c << /BlackList [ /t (DocMedia.newPlayer) ] >> ]
- Save the file
- Restart Adobe Reader or Acrobat
- For an example of what this would look like, see: Sample FeatureLockDown.dat
