Computer

Can we get infected with a virus when opening a PDF that has Flash?

Specifically, we could include this within the category of office documents that are so successful and have market penetration at the moment. In fact, they are used in all kinds of environments, both professional and domestic and related to education. To a great extent, all this is due to the versatility that they present us and thanks to all the elements that we can implement here. While at first a PDF full of text pagesThat is an error.

Why these office files are so popular

We say this because these types of files can contain a large number of additional elements such as images, videos, hyperlinks, graphics, etc. digital signatures, etc. All this together has largely made these files grow exponentially in terms of use. In this way we can find ourselves to store large volumes of information, in the education sector, to make invoices and company budgets, as official documents, and much more.

However, if we delve into everything related to the security, over time we have been able to see that some file formats related to office automation have had certain vulnerabilities. This is something that many of you have surely heard about in relation to Office documents and their sometimes dangerous macros.

And it is that these elements have been used on many occasions to send users various kinds of malicious codes.

Virus risks for opening a PDF with Flash

There are still many users who despite the demise of the Adobe Flash standard, fear that the remains of platforms and applications based on it could be harmful. This is something that in one way or another can affect the files in PDF format that we are talking about at the moment. In fact, there are still many who wonder if these types of files, which are used more and more, can harbor some kind of malicious code due to their implementation of Flash elements.

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Well, we must bear in mind that at the moment these PDF files that we use in all kinds of environments today cannot contain links or content of this standard. The main reason for all this is that Adobe itself has blocked the implementation of these in any file in this format. It is true that a few years ago you could, for example, attach SWF contents in PDFs, but today it is no longer possible. Therefore, the risks of getting infected with some kind of malicious code derived from Flash when using these office files are minimal.

This could happen in the unlikely event that a very old PDF falls into our hands. This is because in the current ones and for some time this has been blocked. Therefore, in the vast majority of cases we should not fear infection by virus to open this type of file Adobe.

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