Les cordonniers sont les plus mal chaussés

I realized yesterday that I was preaching things that I didn’t even do myself. Take for example some simple security principles that I advise people to follow. You would think I would too right? Well, no.

My one (and only) PC at home runs Windows XP, no router and Adobe Reader (and a bunch of other things too). Right there you have a combo for disaster.

I came to realize that while inadvertently coming upon a site that popped up Adobe Reader. A simple thought rushed through my mind: PDF exploit!!!! To make matters worse I reminded myself of all the times Adobe bugged me to update the program, and always choosing No (or ask me later). Hmm… an out of date version of reader, very ripe for exploits. (Not that it seems to matter these days anyway with zero-day exploits that take a month to get patched.)

Needless to say I felt pretty stupid. I checked Process Explorer quickly to see if any malicious processes had a chance to run… Nothing. Run a couple of scans.. nothing. Did I get lucky? Possibly.

This taught me a lesson though and I promptly uninstalled Adobe Reader to replace it with a standalone installer of an obscure PDF viewer.

We have a saying in French: “Les cordonniers sont les plus mal chaussés.” which would translate to “Shoemakers’ wives go barefoot”.

Jerome