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Mallory
HighCISA KEVExploited in the wildPublic exploit

Adobe Reader and Acrobat LibTIFF vulnerability

IdentifiersCVE-2010-0188CWE-119

CVE-2010-0188 is an unspecified vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat affecting 8.x before 8.2.1 and 9.x before 9.3.1. The provided content and historical exploit-kit references consistently associate this issue with PDF-based exploitation and label it as a "PDF LibTIFF" vulnerability, indicating the flaw was triggered through malicious PDF content involving Adobe's handling of LibTIFF-related data. Adobe's public description in the provided data states that successful exploitation could cause an application crash and could possibly allow arbitrary code execution. The vulnerability was widely weaponized in exploit kits including Blackhole, Nuclear, Sakura, Styx, Fiesta, White Lotus, HiMan, Impact, CritXPack, Sweet Orange, Redkit, Grandsoft, and others, demonstrating reliable remote exploitation against vulnerable Reader/Acrobat installations.

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation can crash Adobe Reader or Acrobat, causing a denial of service. The available vendor description also states that arbitrary code execution may be possible. In practical terms, the supporting content shows the vulnerability was repeatedly used by exploit kits to deliver malware payloads, including banking malware and ransomware, so impact for a successfully exploited target can include execution of attacker-supplied code in the context of the user opening or rendering the malicious PDF, followed by malware installation and initial access.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

If immediate patching is not possible, reduce exposure by disabling or restricting Adobe Reader/Acrobat use on untrusted PDFs, blocking PDF delivery from untrusted web sources and email where feasible, and using browser, email, and web-content filtering to prevent delivery of exploit-kit PDFs. Additional mitigations include application allowlisting, endpoint protections that block exploit behavior or child-process/payload execution from PDF readers, and isolating PDF rendering in sandboxed or virtualized environments. Because this vulnerability was heavily exploited through drive-by exploit kits, limiting access to untrusted websites and disabling vulnerable legacy plugin/browser integrations also reduces risk.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade Adobe Reader and Acrobat to fixed versions. The provided content identifies affected versions as Adobe Reader and Acrobat 8.x before 8.2.1 and 9.x before 9.3.1, so remediation is to update 8.x deployments to 8.2.1 or later and 9.x deployments to 9.3.1 or later. Standard remediation should also include removing unsupported legacy Reader/Acrobat versions from the environment and validating that PDF-handling endpoints are fully patched.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No valid public exploits. Mallory filtered out 1 candidate as fakes, detection scripts, or README-only repos.

VALID 0 / 1 TOTALView more in app

All candidate exploits were filtered out by Mallory's validation.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
AdobeAcrobatapplication
AdobeAcrobat Readerapplication

Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.

What this page doesn’t show

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Exposure mapping

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Threat actor evidence1

Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.

Associated malware6

Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.

Detection signatures1

YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.

Vendor-by-vendor mapping

Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.

Social activity

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