Confidential vulnerability information managed by the CERT Coordination Center has again been leaked to the public, following a flurry of such leaks in March.

The latest information concerns a flaw in PDF (Portable Document Format) readers for Unix and could allow a remote attacker to trick users into executing malicious code on their machines, according to a copy of the leaked vulnerability report.

As with confidential CERT information that was leaked in March, the latest report was posted to a vulnerability discussion list by an individual using the name "hack4life." The leaked information was taken from communication sent from CERT to software vendors affected by the PDF problem, according to Jeffrey Carpenter, manager of the CERT Coordination Center. The information appears to be from a vulnerability report submitted to CERT by a Cincinnati security researcher by the name of Martyn Gilmore.

Gilmore did not respond to requests for comment and CERT would not comment on how it obtained the PDF vulnerability information or on Gilmore's relationship with the Pittsburgh-based software vulnerability monitoring organization.

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Related items

• Advisory: Updated Xpdf packages fix security vulnerability (18 June 2003)