Rule Category

FILE-PDF -- Snort has detected suspicious traffic related to a PDF file. PDFs are easily exploitable. They include many ways to encapsulate data and are often targeted by attackers, who use the PDF's household name status for social engineering. Therefore, Snort includes Many PDF-targeted rules.

Alert Message

FILE-PDF Adobe Acrobat heap buffer overflow attempt

Rule Explanation

The rule is looking for sequence of javascript objects/calls in the PDF document. The sequence in the rule is known to exploit CVE-2021-21017

What To Look For

This rules alerts when a computer tries to download PDF which can be used to exploit CVE-2021-21017 and potentially take control of the system

Known Usage

No public information

False Positives

No known false positives

Contributors

Cisco Talos Intelligence Group

Rule Groups

No rule groups

CVE

Additional Links

Rule Vulnerability

Buffer Overflow

Buffer Overflows occur when a memory location is filled past its expected boundaries. Computer attackers target systems without proper terminating conditions on buffers, which then write the additional information in other locations in memory, overwriting what is there. This could corrupt the data, making the system behave erratically or crash. The new information could include malicious executable code, which might be executed.

CVE Additional Information

This product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.
CVE-2021-21017
Loading description

MITRE ATT&CK Framework

Tactic: Execution

Technique: User Execution

For reference, see the MITRE ATT&CK vulnerability types here: https://attack.mitre.org