[Snuffy]

Adobe PDF Flaw Only Affects XP, IE7, Company Confirms
Thursday, October 11, 2007,
A Reuters story that made the rounds this afternoon picked up on information first reported by BetaNews three weeks ago, regarding a vulnerability in PDF files rendered in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader. But Reuters' reluctance to mention Windows until paragraph 10 on panel #2 may have been partly responsible today for some security sites reporting that the vulnerability affects Linux and Solaris users as well.<|>
Original Story
Adobe PDF Flaw Only Affects XP, IE7, Company Confirms
By Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews
October 10, 2007, 6:23 PM
A Reuters story that made the rounds this afternoon picked up on information first reported by BetaNews three weeks ago, regarding a vulnerability in PDF files rendered in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader.

But Reuters' reluctance to mention Windows until paragraph 10 on panel #2 may have been partly responsible today for some security sites reporting that the vulnerability affects Linux and Solaris users as well.


While Reuters stated Adobe officials were not immediately available for comment, they did make themselves readily available to BetaNews. Spokesperson John Cristofano researched our inquiry and reported back to us that the vulnerability affects only Windows XP users with Internet Explorer 7 installed.

GNU Citizen.org researcher Petko D. Petkov is credited with having discovered the vulnerability, and with having disclosed its dynamics to Adobe prior to any public disclosure. His original headline for the discovery was "0day: PDF Owns Windows," making it clear the problem did not impact any Linux or UNIX distribution.

One clue to the fact that the problem is Windows-centric might have been ascertained by studying Adobe's posted solution, which involves a Windows System Registry hack.