alt Hacker NewsWhat a sleight of hand. PDF's are obviously not executable, any more than text files are. Decoders are executable and they can choose to unsafely handle input. Even plain text editors can have exploits. It's no different than any piece of complex software.
The characterization of the PDF format specifically being “basically code” in any substantial manner is simply incorrect. The only PDF-specific features that reasonably meet that description is the PostScript support, which has fallen out of use decades ago and was completely removed in PDF 2.0, and the JavaScript support, which is optional, prohibited in PDF/A, and can easily be limited or omitted by a PDF viewer.