Check Point Advisories

Adobe Acrobat Reader eBook Format String (CVE-2004-1153)

Vulnerability
Protection

Check Point Reference:	CPAI-2004-209
Date Published:	18 Nov 2009
Severity:	High
Last Updated:	Wednesday 18 November, 2009
Source:
Industry Reference:	CVE-2004-1153
Protection Provided by:	Security Gateway R81, R80, R77, R75
Who is Vulnerable?
Vulnerability Description	Electronic Book Exchange (EBX), a Digital Restrictions Management standard that allows a vendor of digital content to control material by restricting its usage in various ways. The standard is designed for protecting the copyright on electronic books, allowing for the distribution of protected content among publishers, distributors, retailers, libraries, and consumers. The standard was proposed by the Open eBook Forum and adopted by Glassbook and Adobe. A vulnerability exists within the EBX Transfer Data (ETD) file parser of the eBook plug-in component of Adobe Acrobat Reader. The ETD file parser contains a flaw where user input can be used as the format string in an output function, potentially causing memory corruption. This vulnerability can be leveraged by an attacker to remotely inject and execute code on a target system with the privileges of the currently logged in user. In a simple attack case, upon triggering the vulnerability, the affected application will terminate unexpectedly. A memory access violation error is generated. The application will not add an entry in the system logs upon termination. In the case of a more sophisticated attack, the attacker may craft the ETD file to write arbitrary values to arbitrary memory locations which may result in code execution. In the case of a code execution attack, the behaviour of the target system is dependent on the intended function of the injected code.

Protection Overview

This protection will detect and block attempts to exploit this vulnerability

In order for the protection to be activated, update your Security Gateway product to the latest IPS update. For information on how to update IPS, go to SBP-2006-05, click on Protection tab and select the version of your choice.

Security Gateway R80 / R77 / R75

In the IPS tab, click Protections and find the Adobe Acrobat Reader eBook Format String protection using the Search tool and Edit the protection's settings.
Install policy on all Security Gateways.

This protection's log will contain the following information:

Attack Name: Adobe Reader Violation.
Attack Information: Adobe Acrobat Reader eBook format string