Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

It's not only Adobe Reader that needs patching against maliciously constructed PDF files. Targeted attacks against an unpatched flaw in Adobe Reader over recent weeks has stimulated interest in alternative PDF viewers, such as FoxIT.

However FoxIT is also vulnerable to the same type of threat, promoting the release of a security update addressing three security bugs in the software on Monday. The update to FoxIT defends against a JBIG2 symbol dictionary processing error, a stack-based buffer overflow flaw and a security authorization bypass bug.

The buffer-overflow bug is the worst of the three flaws and carries the most obvious risk of code-injection attacks. The JBIG2 processing bug also looks especially nasty, because it involves the same component as the target of confirmed attacks against Adobe Reader.

Updates to Adobe Acrobat and Reader are due on Wednesday (11 March) and is arguably more important not just because the user base of Adobe Reader dwarfs that of alternative viewers such as FoxIT and SumatraPDF but because the security bugs in Adobe's software are the focus of targeted hacking attacks over the last three weeks or so. ®

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