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Submitted by: Bill Hickey
NCVA Listmaster
NRT-0620 US‑CERT warns that exploit kits spreading new PDF attacks:
The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US‑CERT) and Secure Computing's Antl‑Malware Research Labs have warned that a new set of exploit toolkits are being used to spread Portable Document Format (PDF) file based attacks, according to an online news report. The organizations issued alerts after several exploit toolkits, including PDF Xploit Pack and El Fiesta, were found to be exploited in the wild.
Secure Computing said that the toolkits are especially dangerous due to their ability to avoid security systems. The latest attacks catalogue infected users and refrain from sending attacks more than once, which makes it more difficult for security vendors to track dOwn the source of the attacks and prevent further infections.
In addition to new tools, security researchers have also found PDF exploit components being added on to existing attack systems. The risk is further compounded by the fact that PDF files ‑ commonly found in home and enterprise systems ‑ are often considered to be less risky than other formats.
[vnunet.com 26Sep08]
Last Modified: Friday, 10-Oct-2008 12:38:37 EDT
