McAfee blocks opening pdf files with Adobe Acrobat reader

By Howard Davis
in Microsoft (Windows)

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Community Regular

Howard Davis

Posted
Posted

My OS is Win 7. Scans show I'm free of viruses and malware. 

 

When I click on a pdf attached to an email, my McAfee LifeSave blocks opening it due to the "suspicious activity" of "buffer overflow." 

I did an installation repair (in Adobe Acrobat) but this did not help. This program is up to date.

Where to from here? Advice from those more knowledgeable than myself (probably most of you) would be greatly appreciated! 

 

I posted this yesterday to the thread on browsers, but no one has replied yet:

I boot up and after a minute or two go to Chrome, which used to be my best browser. It often works at first, allowing me to go to my bookmarked email server, but it soon freezes up with the program indicated as "not responding." It stays like that for a minute or two, then resumes working normally. I've cleared the cache, history, cookies, etc. - this does not help. I could find no relevant advice in Chrome itself. The problem appears to be getting worse.

Grand Master

Brandon H Supervisor

Posted
  • Supervisor
Posted

i'd recommend creating a thread in the McAfee support forums. It sounds to me like a bug with McAfee and not Adobe in your case.

 

or if possible switch to another protection sweet as McAfee has not had the best reputation recently again

Grand Master

shockz

Posted
Posted
32 minutes ago, Brandon H said:

i'd recommend creating a thread in the McAfee support forums. It sounds to me like a bug with McAfee and not Adobe in your case.

Why is this the defacto response here now? That or a lmgtfy link. Might as well shutdown the forums. What a sad shell this place has become.

Grand Master

+Warwagon MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

Are we sure the PDF you are trying to open is safe? Is it from a trusted source? As far as the freeze in chrome, click on the 3 dots in the top right and click  More tools and then extension. Make sure you don't have any crappy extensions inadvertently installed. I'm sure Mcafee added an extension to chrome.

 

You may try temporarily disabling it to see if the freezing in chrome goes away.  This is just to test the freezing. I wouldn't recommend trying to open the PDF as it could be infected. If there is no sensitive info in that PDF you may want to save it to your PC and upload it to virus total, http://www.virustotal.com

Mentor

JaredFrost

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, shockz said:

Why is this the defacto response here now? That or a lmgtfy link. Might as well shutdown the forums. What a sad shell this place has become.

There is a reason why people don't recommend McAfee, I myself wouldn't recommend it if someone asked.

 

Saying that, I am not 100% sure McAfee is even the issue here, I don't have enough information, maybe there IS something wrong with the PDF, or maybe there is a virus on there already, and it's trying to infect PDFs when you open them.

 

What happens if you save the PDF to the computer first and try to open it that way? does it do the same thing?

If you open the Event Viewer, what kind of errors do you see in System?

Same question for the Applications section of Event Viewer.

 

 

Grand Master

xendrome

Posted
Posted
10 minutes ago, shockz said:

Why is this the defacto response here now? That or a lmgtfy link. Might as well shutdown the forums. What a sad shell this place has become.

If he is a paying customer wouldn't it make perfect sense to go straight to the source instead of random people guessing at random methods/fixes?

Grand Master

goretsky Supervisor

Posted
  • Supervisor
Posted

Hello,

 

Was the PDF file one that you were expecting to receive from the recipient, or is it something that sounds like it could be from someone you know  or do business with and an enticing message that makes you want to open it right at this very moment, like a message saying it contains an unpaid invoice, an order for your business, an important message from your bank, jury summons and so forth?

 

Have you tried uploading the PDF file to a multi-engine scanning service like Google's VirusTotal?  If so, what did it report when it scanned the file with multiple security programs?

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

Community Regular

Howard Davis

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Thank you all for your expert replies.

I agree about McAfee and will replace it with free AVAST antivirus when my subscription expires.

As far as Chrome goes, just letting it sit and stabilize for a minute or two before using it seems best.

The pdf files came from a trusted source. Today I had the same experience with an attached Word file. As advised, I went to the firewall and reset it to default settings. 

NOW ALL IS OK. I can open pdf and word files without McAfee blocking and warning me of the "suspicious activity" of buffer overflow.

I still however must open a pdf file with protected mode disabled due to (I'm told) system incompatibilities. I only open attached files of any kind that come from known trusted sources.

Grand Master

goretsky Supervisor

Posted
  • Supervisor
Posted

Hello,

 

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure why you are receiving these messages from McAfee's software.  I left there in 1995.... 23 years ago.

 

The best suggest I have is to give their technical support department a call, or post a message on their own support forum.  You'll want to do things like have the exact version number of the software and its virus signature database file ready to give them, as well as the exact name of the file(s) being flagged, and, if you really want to be helpful, the SHA-1 hash or MD5 sum for each detected file.  That should be enough information to help their tech support folks start an investigation.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

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