In the past 2 days we’ve been picking up malicious Adobe Acrobat files also known as PDF’s (the file extension on these files).

We received these files in our honeypots as email attachments and when clicked on they infect Windows XP SP3 systems with Adobe Acrobat 8.1.1, 8.1.2, 8.1.3 and 9.0.0. It appears that disabling JavaScript in your Adobe Acrobat Reader will eliminate the threat that this attack exploits.

To disable JavaScript in Adobe Acrobat Reader, open the program, click on Edit->Preferences->JavaScript then uncheck Enable Acrobat JavaScript. You may experience some program crashes even with JavaScript disabled, however, you will not become infected.

When a computer is infected, it will have these additional files:

1. temp/svchost.exe
2. temp/temp.exe
3. system32/(8 random characters).dll

In addition the infected computer will open a backdoor that will allow the cybercriminal to remotely control the PC (it will become part of a botnet)

Of course, if you’re security system is blocking “exe” downloads from non-whitelisted sites, you don’t have worry about this. (The Box does)