[22153] in bugtraq
Re: Adobe PDF files can be used as virus carriers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brett Glass)
Wed Aug 8 12:15:07 2001
Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20010807222036.04595df0@localhost>
Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2001 22:23:17 -0600
To: rms@privacyfoundation.org (Richard M. Smith), <bugtraq@securityfocus.com>
From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
In-Reply-To: <004301c11f51$a3ce41a0$6501a8c0@tiac.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
At 09:44 AM 8/7/2001, Richard M. Smith wrote:
>Hello,
>
>This is an interesting development. Zulu, a virus writer from South
>America, appears to have discovered that Adobe PDF files can be used to
>carry computer viruses.
Richard (and everyone):
What this means is that virus scanners will now need to "reach inside"
PDFs to scan encapsulated files. But what -- as I'm sure our Russian
friend Dmitri would ask -- if the PDF is encrypted? Wouldn't the
virus checker have to defeat the encryption to see the encapsulated
file? And would it be an illegal "circumvention" mechanism if it did?
--Brett Glass
