F15 Why does gnome-shell automatically start Adobe acroread updater? (malware?)

[Ed Greshko]

On 07/12/2011 04:19 AM, Deron Meranda wrote:
> For some reason, my Gnome 3 shell process has forked off an 'acroread'
> process which I did not start!
>
> It appears to be attempting to install itself or do something in the
> background.  This is completely unacceptable, nothing should ever
> attempt to download and run some unauthenticated script and should
> never attempt to install anything without my explicit knowledge and
> permission!
>
> I consider this to be a security breach and failure of the Fedora
> security policies to permit this.  In fact there should be a separate
> SELinux context for this commercial app just so it can't do anything
> to my system without my knowledge.
>
> UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
> XXX       2509  2483  0 Jul10 ?        00:00:01 gnome-session
> XXX       2615  2509  1 Jul10 ?        00:12:04 /usr/bin/gnome-shell
> XXX      16717  2615  0 13:46 ?        00:00:08 acroread
> XXX      16769 16717 20 13:46 ?        00:29:25 /bin/sh
> /tmp/acrobat.n9vv0T/AdobeReader/INSTALL --lzma=/home/XXX
> XXX      7662 16769  0 15:40 ?        00:00:00 [INSTALL] <defunct>
>
> Does the Gnome shell have some sort of auto-start or auto-update
> capability in it, that perhaps Adobe has surreptitiously hooked itself
> into. And how do I get it back out?
>
>
> (The only reason I even have Adobe reader is because Evince can not
> fully handle the US IRS tax forms.)

FWIW, I installed acroread via the yum repo of adobe.  There are no
processes being started in GNOME or KDE at login.


-- 
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to
speak it to? -- Clarence Darrow