Another day, another Adobe PDF Reader security hole

Another day, another Adobe PDF Reader security hole

A new day, a new security vulnerability haunting users of Adobe's PDF Reader software.

Adobe today acknowledged the public release of a demo PDF file that could be weaponized to launch denial-of-service or even remote code execution attacks.

That's right Generation Y has entered the workforce (as anemic as it currently is), and is bound to become the gucci handbags part of your enterprise within the next 10-15 years. What does this mean for your organization? How are the needs of Gen Y different from that of existing markets? And why does this have anything to do with Enterprise IT?

The answers are below, but rest assured, the emergence of Millennials in the workforce is every bit a crisis point for your IT planning as dealing with the downfall of EA Frameworks and Cyberwarfare, albeit with most likely a positive ending.

What makes Gen Y different?

Wikipedia's Generation Y entry provides somecheap coach handbagsneeded detail on what exactly we're dealing with here:

Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation, Generation Next or Net Generation, describes the demographic cohort following Generation X. Its members are often referred to as Millennials or Echo Boomers commentators have used birth dates ranging somewhere from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s, but most agree on birth dates between 1982 and 1995. Members of this generation are called Echo Boomers, due to the significant increase in birth rates between 19821995, and because most of them are children of baby boomers. The term Generation Y first appeared in an August 1993 Ad Age editorial to describe teenagers of the day

Okay, so they're baby boomer spawn. Big deal? Well, not necessarily. Without exception, Gen Y'ers (let's use the term Millennials from here on to simplify the writing) have grown up entirely in the information age. They don't know a world without computers, gucci handbags,cell phones, and MTV.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were already fighting by the time they were born, and the term minicomputer never even entered their lexicon. But what makes the Millennials most relevant for the enterprise is that their experience of IT is primarily with the vast rate of change happening on the consumer side, rather than in the enterprise.

The proof-of-concept, posted to the Full Disclosure security mailing list, successfully crashes fully patched versions of Adobe Reader. The company says it is investigating the issue and warned that arbitrary code execution "may be possible."

Adobe is aware of a potential issue in Adobe Reader posted publicly today on the Full Disclosure list. A proof-of-concept file demonstrating a Denial of Service was published. Arbitrary code execution has not been demonstrated, but may be possible. We are currently investigating this issue. In the meantime, users of Adobe Reader 9.2 or later and 8.1.7 or later can utilize the JavaScript Blacklist Framework to prevent the issue by following the instructions below. Note that Adobe Acrobat is not affected by this issue.

The JavaScript Blacklist Framework provides granular control over the execution of specific JavaScript APIs. It allows selective blocking of vulnerable APIs so that you do not have to resort to disabling JavaScript altogether.

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