50 CVEs in 50 Days: Fuzzing Adobe Reader

Post by inferiorhuman » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 6:34 AM UTC

AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #17

xvilka wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libpoppler has poor support for PDF Forms (especially Unicode[1][2]), embedded animation and 3D extensions. In my opinion these areas are very important in real world document exchange to be ignored (as it is a case for PDF FOSS tools). [1] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17913 [2] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/issues/463

I have never seen anyone use any of these features in the real world. I presume that embedded animation and 3D extensions are used in art-related fields? If so that would explain my ignorance.

Post by megous » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 6:40 AM UTC

devwastaken wrote: post #30

saagarjha wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDFs are supposed to look the same on every computer. Webpages can’t do that yet.

I don't know how accurate that is for PDF's, but webpages are supposed to look the same, and given known compatible styling, it should be on any modern browser. Browsers are extremely consistent in content presentation, that's why webpages from early 2000s still look the same.

Post by feanaro » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 6:47 AM UTC

mistrial9 wrote: post #10

AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #8

Do people still use Adobe reader nowadays? Last time that I tried it in my school's library it took half a minute to load and render my document, and after that the whole UI was unresponsive. I had a much better experience with Sumatra on windows and Zathura on Linux where my documents open almost instantly.

.. tried Zathura on LUbuntu just now for the first time ; appears to be a VIM for documents viewing or something.. no interest in Zathura here!

Post by russellbeattie » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 6:53 AM UTC

time-domain0 wrote: post #5

If you read the PDF spec from the late 90's, it is Stephen King novel-scary... container format, multiple encodings, encryption, embedded binaries, embedded JavaScript and more.

Post by ryacko » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 7:05 AM UTC

kibibu wrote: post #38

AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that PDF was created as a response to postscript being "too programmable" and not "document enough" but then they decided that PDF is too minimal and so they ended up bloating it beyond what PostScript ever was by including JavaScript, Flash, and other trash in it.

It's got a 3d model viewer in it