Mitigating the Adobe Acrobat PDF Attachment Launch Problem

This via Susan.

To mitigate the problem where an executable is embedded in a PDF file, we need to make a change in Adobe Reader/Standard/Professional:

In the Trust Manager uncheck the Allow opening of non-PDF file attachments with external applications.

Since we want _all_ of our client user’s Adobe products to have this setting disabled, we are going to push the above out via Group Policy. We are also going to push a setting out that disables the user’s ability to enable this setting in any affected Adobe product.

The above registry settings and a description are discussed on the Adobe Reader Blog here:

•  Adobe Reader Blog: PDF "/Launch" Social Engineering Attack

Now, off to get our client’s computer security GPOs updated with the above.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

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