September 11, 2024 at 01:44PM
A critical “use after free” vulnerability (CVE-2024-41869) in Adobe Acrobat Reader could lead to remote code execution through specially crafted PDF documents. Discovered in June, a security fix was initially ineffective, but a new release has addressed the issue. This discovery stems from cybersecurity researcher Haifei Li’s EXPMON platform, aiming to detect advanced exploits.
From the provided meeting notes, we have gathered the following key points:
– A critical zero-day vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-41869, was discovered in Adobe Acrobat Reader, which could lead to remote code execution when opening a specially crafted PDF document. This vulnerability is a “use after free” vulnerability.
– A proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for the vulnerability was discovered in June through the sandbox-based platform EXPMON, created by cybersecurity researcher Haifei Li.
– After disclosing the flaw to Adobe, a security update was released, but it did not fully fix the vulnerability. However, a new security update has now been released by Adobe, effectively fixing the bug, now tracked as CVE-2024-41869.
– Haifei Li will be releasing details on how the bug was detected on EXPMON’s blog and further technical information in an upcoming Check Point Research report.
These are the main takeaways from the meeting notes regarding the urgent need to upgrade Adobe Acrobat Reader to the latest version to address the critical vulnerability.