BlackBerrys at risk from malicious PDFs

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Smartphone manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) has warned about vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to take control of BlackBerry devices.

RIM said there were multiple vulnerabilities in the PDF distiller on some versions of the BlackBerry Attachment Service component of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

It said that these flaws could enable a criminal hacker to send a malicious PDF file via email.

When opened for viewing on a BlackBerry, it would cause memory corruption, leading to a denial of service attack or the hacker having the ability to take over the phone.

RIM said that the vulnerabilities scored a severity rating of 9.3 or 5.7 out of 10, depending on the configuration of the software.

This is not the first time such a vulnerability has occurred. Back in April, a similar issue was flagged by RIM.

To resolve the problem, RIM has issued various patches and interim security updates.

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