r/sysadmin • u/TheJesusGuy Blast the server with hot air • Sep 14 '24

My business shares a single physical desktop with RDP open between 50 staff to use Adobe Acrobat Pro 2008. Question

I have now put a stop to this, but my boss "IT Director" tells me how great it was and what a shame it is that its gone. I am now trying to find another solution, for free or very cheap, as I'm getting complaints about PDF Gear not handling editing their massive PDF files. They simply wont buy real licenses for everyone.

What's the solution here, and can someone put into words just how stupid the previous one was?

Edit - I forgot to say the machine was running Windows 8! The machine also ran all our network licenses and a heap of other unmaintained software, which I have slowly transferred to a Windows 10, soon 11 VM.

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u/mahsab Sep 14 '24 edited Sep 14 '24

How is sharing a license related with getting ransomwared? Even if they had 50 licenses on paper, how would that make a difference?

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u/ITguydoingITthings Sep 14 '24

Because people have fallen for the scare tactics for so long without investigating the reality behind ransomware attacks, in this example.

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u/zandadoum Sep 14 '24

Because it was run on an outdated OS blindly shared with 50 people

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24 edited 18d ago

[deleted]

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u/ITguydoingITthings Sep 14 '24

OP never stated it was public facing. Was an internal system shared via RDP.

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u/EnergyPanther Sep 14 '24

  1. Send a user a pdf with a payload in it asking for a signature or something

  2. User rdps into ACROBAT 2008 WINDOWS 8 MACHINE (CVE rich?)

Really pick your poison after that. Fileshares are most likely all open if that's how they treat their pdf solution - deploy malware through open fileshares. Win 8 box probably has shit security on it or is riddled with vulnerabilities - get system access and harvest credentials/ session tokens as THE WHOLE COMPANY connects to the machine throughout the week.

Honestly as a former pentester / red team operator this is easy mode.

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u/mahsab Sep 15 '24

And again, absolutely nothing to do with licensing. They could have simply upgraded to Windows 11 and the latest Acrobat.

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u/TheJesusGuy Blast the server with hot air Sep 14 '24

It was 1 license.

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u/mahsab Sep 14 '24

I know, but what does the number of licenses have to do with the security?

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u/Moleculor Sep 14 '24

Windows 8 stopped receiving security updates about two years ago.

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u/mahsab Sep 14 '24

Upgrade to Windows 11, then; no relation to licenses

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u/rainnz Sep 14 '24

Just keep it off the Internet...

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u/Angelworks42 Sep 14 '24

The issue is that the app they are using is several major versions out of date and has gone unpatched for more than a decade.