New virus attacks PDFs

Fears are mounting over the possibility that Adobe's popular PDF format could be the next stop for virus writers follwing the discovery of Peachy, a Visual Basic script that can be embedded into a PDF document.

Fortunately, it will not affect users simply opening or viewing PDF files in Acrobat Reader. Because of the way attachment files are implemented in PDF format, a user would have to open the infected document in Acrobat, the software used to create PDFs.

If the file is opened in Acrobat, the virus is activated and will email itself in PDF format to all addresses found in the user's Outlook Address book. What else it does is unclear at the time of writing.

Because Peachy has a limited mechanism for infection, it has only been tagged as low risk by antivirus firms.

However, the emergence of the virus has drummed up some concern that the PDF format itself could become a new vessel for infection especially if, at some point in the future, Adobe added attachment handling functionality to its Acrobat Reader software.