PDF files, long a reliable medium of document exchange in business, are again being used to spread malware.Most organisation filter out file attachments such as those ending with .exe, .bat, .vbs, .scr and others which could conceal malicious payloads, but very few pat any attention to .pdf files, which are considered harmless.
Exploiting this trust, the new Trojan horse, PDFex, is typically spammed out in email messages with an infected Adobe Acrobat PDF attachment. When the attachment is opened, the PC is infected with the Trojan.
By the end of October, the PDFex virus smashed its way into third position in the world virus chart, making it the greatest PDF threat hitherto.
Adobe has published a fix, and users are advised to ensure that they are using the latest version of Acrobat Reader (currently v 8.1.1), and that it is regularly opened, and updated by opening the help menu and clicking “check for updates” - this action should install the fix. Windows security patches should also be up to date.
For more information click here.
Click on the image (above right) to get the latest version of the reader (and then, once installed, be go to the updates menu under "help")
