Now we know that there are PDF Exploits being used more and more to fake anti virus software. I am here to discuss how to make it harder for these exploits to happen in the first. So I will be walking you through using Firefox as the browser, so if you haven’t downloaded Firefox. I would recommend downloading it, it is much safer than using Internet Explorer.
In Firefox, Click Tools, and then Options:
You will look for anything that says Adobe in the Applications tab and select either Always ask or Save file. I recommend setting it to “Always Ask” for the one reason you will know if you have visited a site that uses PDF’s, it gives you a warning of when some website tries to uses Adobes PDF reader.
I also go into Adobe Reader:
Click Edit>Preferences
Disabling Javascript will help prevent some of the more common exploits in Adobe, and anyway I do not need Javascript enabled to read a PDF because I hate flashing stuff while I am trying to read.
This will prevent it from using your web browser you will have to use Adobe Reader to read this. From my understanding if you use Adobe Reader in your browser they can put redirects in internet explorer and have some control over what you browser does when you load it up. This prevents any exploit from taking over IE, or Firefox because now they work alone and not together. While you at it with Firefox, I would go into the Addons Section. Click Tools>Addons and Disable the Adobe Reader Addon to be even more safer on the internet.
Now this won’t protect you a 100% but will greatly make it harder for those invisible Iframes to infect your system. I also have Free AVG running and [intlink id=”3884″ type=”post”]SUPERAntiSpyware Pro[/intlink] running all the time to better protect my system. You may need to download the PDF to be able to read it. You can change the Firefox options above to save it instead of asking what you want to do.
