The JavaScript Blacklist Framework is a security feature Adobe released with Adobe Reader and Acrobat versions 8.1.7 and 9.2.

When you’re in a case where you need to use Adobe Reader and you can’t disable JavaScript, the JavaScript Blacklist Framework can help you mitigate zero-days in JavaScript API functions by disabling the vulnerable functions.

I produced a video where I disable util.printf:

Notice that when I blacklist util.printf, the script still executes until the blacklisted function util.printf is called. At that moment, the script is cancelled and the user is warned.

On Windows, you can blacklist functions by adding them to registry value tBlackList (HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\product\version\FeatureLockDown\cJavaScriptPerms\tBlackList). To blacklist more than one function, use the same registry value and separate the functions by the pipe-character (e.g. Util.printf|Collab.getIcon). Pay attention to the fact that the framework is case-sensitive (e.g. Util.printf is correct, util.printf is not correct).

The framework is impervious to bypassing with some basic obfuscation techniques found in malicious PDFs (eval(“util.printf… ; x = util.printf; x(“… ).

It’s too bad that blacklisting is limited to the JavaScript API; the functions to blacklist must be in the form <object-name>.<function-name>. Otherwise we would be able to blacklist some global functions of the JavaScript language that are often used in malicious PDF files, like unescape. According to the ECMAScript specification, unescape is a member function of the Global Object. I tried several ways to blacklist it (unescape, .unescape, this.unescape, Doc.unescape, …), but failed.

If you really want to disable unescape, you could do this by patching the JavaScript plugin EScript.api. Maybe I’ll post a method to do this in-memory with my basic process manipulation tool kit.