OK, PDFs don’t actually carry the swine flu, but PDFs are used to make your computer sick. The bad guys know that many people will open anything, regardless of where it came from, if it has bad news in it.
There have been a couple of vulnerabilities found in Adobe Acrobat recently. One of the vulnerabilities has been patched, but the other has not. You really need to make sure that you are suing the latest version of Acrobat, or another PDF reader, and disable JavaScript if you use Adobe.
Additionally, never open anything about current news events if you did not subscribe to the news provider. It is always a trick and the information is never worth reading. Never open anything about a lottery you didn’t enter, you never will win such a lottery.
ESET has generic detection that can proactively block many of the PDF threats, but the bad guys are always tweaking things to try to get past ALL scanners. It is a far better practice to just not open the unsolicited attachments and not follow links to news stories from unsolicited sources.
Just because you wear a seatbelt it doesn’t make it a good idea to drive into walls. Just because you have security software, it doesn’t make it a good idea to look at unsolicited emails and attachments for news.
Randy Abrams
Director of Technical Education
