Nuance PDF viewing products contain multiple vulnerabilities

Overview

Nuance PDF viewing products contain multiple memory-corruption vulnerabilities, which may allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system.

Description

Nuance provides two similar PDF viewing products called PDF Reader and PDF Viewer Plus. Both of these products contain multiple exploitable memory-corruption vulnerabilities. We have found that both Nuance PDF Reader 7.0 and PDF Viewer Plus 7.1 are affected.

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Impact

By convincing a user to view a specially crafted PDF document, an attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system.

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Solution

We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem. Please consider the following workarounds:

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Use the Microsoft Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit

The Microsoft Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) can be used to help prevent exploitation of this vulnerability. CERT/CC has created a video tutorial for setting up EMET 3.0 on Windows 7. Note that platforms that do not support ASLR, such as Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, will not receive the same level of protection that modern Windows platforms will.

Enable DEP in Microsoft Windows

Consider enabling Data Execution Prevention (DEP) in supported versions of Windows. DEP should not be treated as a complete workaround, but it can mitigate the execution of attacker-supplied code in some cases. Microsoft has published detailed technical information about DEP in Security Research & Defense blog posts “Understanding DEP as a mitigation technology” part 1 and part 2. DEP should be used in conjunction with the application of patches or other mitigations described in this document.

Note that when relying on DEP for exploit mitigation, it is important to use a system that supports Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) as well. ASLR is not supported by Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 or earlier. ASLR was introduced with Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Please see the Microsoft SRD blog entry: On the effectiveness of DEP and ASLR for more details.

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Vendor Information

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Nuance Communications, Inc. Affected

Notified: December 17, 2012 Updated: February 05, 2013

Status

Affected

Vendor Statement

We have not received a statement from the vendor.

Vendor Information

We are not aware of further vendor information regarding this vulnerability.

CVSS Metrics

Group	Score	Vector
Base	10	AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
Temporal	9	E:POC/RL:U/RC:C
Environmental	2.3	CDP:ND/TD:L/CR:ND/IR:ND/AR:ND

References

• <http://www.nuance.com/products/pdf-reader/index.htm&gt;
• <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2458544&gt;
• <http://blogs.technet.com/srd/archive/2009/06/05/understanding-dep-as-a-mitigation-technology-part-1.aspx&gt;
• <http://blogs.technet.com/srd/archive/2009/06/12/understanding-dep-as-a-mitigation-technology-part-2.aspx&gt;
• <http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2010/12/08/on-the-effectiveness-of-dep-and-aslr.aspx&gt;

Acknowledgements

These vulnerabilities were reported by Will Dormann of the CERT/CC.

This document was written by Will Dormann.

Other Information

CVE IDs:	CVE-2013-0113
Date Public:	2013-02-07 Date First Published: