A pdf file doesnt have any special permissions or anything so i cant think of any way that itd be able to
is viewing a pdf file in chrome completly safe?
how does editing a word document leave you more vulnerable than if you were just viewing it?
In: 4927
Yes, PDF inside chrome is safe. The rendering library they use is very well tested and secure.
Windows hides file extensions by default (what a bad idea), so if you have a file called `virus.pdf.exe`, Explorer will display it as `virus.pdf` and hide the exe suffix. Exes can have icons inside them, so you can make the exe icon look like the PDF icon. Clicking on it will execute the program and possibly do something terrible to your PC.
There are tricks using a range of unicode features to hide the exe suffix as well.
MS Office documents (word, powerpoint, excel) can have programs hidden inside them (macros written in a variant of VB) which can be used to attack you. Again, this is a mostly terrible idea, but here we are. They are disabled by default for documents downloaded from the web, but people can be tricked into enabling them.
PDFs allow embedded javascript and this can be used to attack your PC if you view the PDF in an insecure program.
**tldr:** computers are very complex and have piles of mostly useless features accumulated over decades, many of which can be repurposed to make you miserable.
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