
- Trouble at the sandbox pdf pdf#
- Trouble at the sandbox pdf plus#
- Trouble at the sandbox pdf windows#
These abilities combined together make a powerful toolkit for an attacker.

the ability to present a fillable form to the user, and then capture and act on the information filled in.the ability to carry a payload of arbitrary file attachments, including malware.the ability to issue an HTTP request to a remote server.The ability to interact with the local file system.The use of javascript to provide interactive content, which allows automation of the user interface.
Trouble at the sandbox pdf pdf#
The PDF file format has many interactive features intended to make the format more useful, but which create significant security risks, including: Sumatra also has configuration options to lock it down even further, such as preventing file system or internet access. Sumatra is a small, lightweight PDF viewer that has no support whatsoever for interactive fillable forms or javascript in PDF files.
Trouble at the sandbox pdf windows#
You could also analyze things like which URLs the document links to: strings ScaryFile.pdf| grep -i "http" | sort | uniq | lessīut, as stated above, 99% of what you'll see from the output of "strings" is going to be metadata and formatting settings.Ī simple and straightforward way to open possibly malicious PDFs on a Windows computer is to use the Sumatra PDF viewer. See the less man page (type "man less") for more magic. You can use the "?" key to do the same thing in the upward direction. Then hit the "n" key to see the next instance of "thingyouwant", over and over till you find what you want. To search down the document for the case-sensitive string "thingyouwant", use the slash key + your string + return: /thingyouwant So you may want to use the search capabilities of the "less" command.
Trouble at the sandbox pdf plus#
Unfortunately, to find it you have to wade through tons of metadata, most of which is in XML, and formatting settings in some other markup, plus some binary (as ascii, not raw bytes). Assuming all you're looking for is text content (not bitmaps or vector graphics), you can scroll down or search and find bits of the text you need. Here is an example of using it on Windows: strings ScaryFile | findstr /i TextToSearchForīut for the rest of my answer here I'll assume you're on *nix, since that is my experience with strings. You can also get "strings" for Windows, as mentioned by Polynomial, below. On *nix systems, do this: strings ScaryFile.pdf | less

In this situation I've always used the Unix/Linux/OSX shell command "strings". Also, it's not a bad idea to run the host Linux environment from a read-only installation (i.e. Save a snapshot of the virtual OS, and then revert to that snapshot after you're done interacting with the malicious content. I'd recommend booting into a Linux system and running your target OS (usually Windows) in Virtualbox or a similar environment. If you find yourself frequently dealing with potentially malicious materials, it would be very wise to set up a hardened virtual environment. This is not necessarily true for all vulnerabilities, so it's important to understand what you're getting in to ahead of time. But there are alternate PDF viewers such as foxit or even Google chrome's built-in viewer that do not necessarily have the same vulnerabilities as Adobe's official viewer. The real issue is knowing whether or not your viewer is vulnerable, which usually means knowing specifically what the exploit is. If you view the document in a program that isn't vulnerable (or in a configuration that inhibits the vulnerability), then you won't be exploited.

Document-based exploits are directed not at the document itself, but rather at some vulnerability in the viewer.
