Re: Adobe PDF files can be used as virus carriers

[Brett Glass <brett () lariat org>]

At 09:44 AM 8/7/2001, Richard M. Smith wrote:
  
> Hello,
>
> This is an interesting development.  Zulu, a virus writer from South
> America, appears to have discovered that Adobe PDF files can be used to
> carry computer viruses.

Richard (and everyone):

What this means is that virus scanners will now need to "reach inside"
PDFs to scan encapsulated files. But what -- as I'm sure our Russian
friend Dmitri would ask -- if the PDF is encrypted? Wouldn't the
virus checker have to defeat the encryption to see the encapsulated
file? And would it be an illegal "circumvention" mechanism if it did?

--Brett Glass