alt Hacker NewsIt looks like atril is mostly written in C:
https://github.com/mate-desktop/atril
A crafted PDF can potentially exploit a bug in atril to compromise the recipient's computer since writing memory-safe C is difficult. This approach was famously used by a malware vendor to exploit iMessage through a compressed image format that's part of the PDF standard:
https://projectzero.google/2021/12/a-deep-dive-into-nso-zero...
This is why Firefox chose to implement a custom PDF reader in pure JS for better sandboxing leveraging the existing browser JS sandboxing. As a side effect, it's been a helpful JS library for embedding PDFs on websites.
The Chrome PDF parser, originating from Foxit (now open-sourced as PDFium), has been the source of many exploits in Chrome itself over the years.