Adobe: Nation-State Attackers Are Adobe's Biggest Worry

From http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/nation-state-attackers-are-adobes-biggest-worry-092011:

 

Following links in the blog reveals one of the recent attacks:

RSA SecurID attack details unveiled – lessons learned
http://blogs.gartner.com/avivah-lit...tails-unveiled-they-should-have-known-better/

From the Adobe Advisory:

Back to the Gartner blog:

Aha! The payload. An unauthorized executable file.

As a System Administrator said to me many years ago, the fact that a trojan executable can install in such attacks means that there is no policy in place dictating that employees can not install something on their own, without Administration/Support approval.

I'll refer to my trusty example from the Los Angeles Police Department:

Naturally, such a restriction may not make for happy employees, but nonetheless, that policy does work to prevent this type of remote code execution attack.

And so, it would not matter whether the attacker is a misguided teenager, or a nation state.

regards,

-rich