From:	 Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
To:	 rms@privacyfoundation.org (Richard M. Smith), <bugtraq@securityfocus.com>
Subject: Re: Adobe PDF files can be used as virus carriers
Date:	 Tue, 07 Aug 2001 22:23:17 -0600

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