PDF = Potentially Dangerous File

[nihil]

It would appear that spammers and scammers are now starting to use PDF file attachments as a means of spreading their wares.

http://www.snpx.com/cgi-bin/news55.c...4239321?-13948

I guess this one is of more interest in the institutional security sector as many organisations use the paid for Adobe product to write and edit such documents.

Employees might thus be lulled into a false sense of security whilst home users would possibly be more suspicious of this relatively "unusual" (to them) format?

[JPnyc]

Yeah, I've seen a few examples of this already. I loathe PDF files, so maybe this will put a dent in their frequency of use.

[t34b4g5]

PDF's are the next big thing, there are so many different attacks you can hide in a PDF, either just by using the file extension of PDF or enclosing a malicious script to run when the user attempts to open the document, or even once the document opens then the script executes in the back ground..

and by doing that sort of malicious stuff you are making it harder for AV's to pick up the file flag it as bad and stop the user from opening/viewing it.

[oofki]

XSS attacks using pdfs have been out for a long time. Use foxit :-)

[nihil]

Yes, but this is raising the bar.............. PDFs are normally used by technical and professional people or in business.

I guess that 90% of private PCs that I see don't even have a PDF reader. This is targetted at people worth scamming.

OK, I know that students use PDFs as well, but they are not really a target as they are usually well in debt already?

[oofki]

You think that few of people really use them? Hmm... I really dont use them often mostly because they are a dog to open but... I think there are a little more people who have them and more that just done use them... (A lot of OEMS preinstall them) who knows though, who knows.

[Aardpsymon]

Yeah, I have to admit....format or not I would be ignoring anything like that unless it came from a trusted sender.

I just wonder how much cheaper bandwidth would be if the spammers weren't using it all. I thought PDFs were fairly common myself, but then again...I wouldn't expect them to be emailed to me without the words "put this on the website" being involved. Actually, the network jobs we just put out to tender mostly came back as PDFs.

[oofki]

I dont know.. I think ISPS want their money reguardless. But I guess that would greatly lower the demand so the price would drop. As far as economics go at least.

[Cider]

I use PDF's on my home computer. Ill keep a look out for them .

Thanks Nihil.

[Mykol]

amazing that pump-n-dumps still actually work... (assuming that they must or they wouldn't be still used).