More Adobe Reader Vulnerabilities

[RedEarth]

Last week, Security Fix warned readers about a newly discovered design flaw in Adobe Reader that could be used to trick users into giving away personal and financial data.

This week, Adobe warned warned that versions 7.0.8 and 7.0.3 of its Reader product are vulnerable to a security hole that criminals could use to break into PCs running the software just by convincing users to view a specially crafted PDF document. Over the weekend, the curators of the Month of Apple Bugs project claimed to have found a dangerous design flaw with the Mac OS X and Windows versions of Adobe Reader.

If you are not running the latest version of Reader Version 8 (to check, look in "Add/Remove Programs list for the version number, or click "Help," and "About Adobe Reader"), please take a minute to upgrade. Alternatively, consider uninstalling Adobe (and its browser plug-ins) and moving to a PDF reader that is faster and has fewer features (i.e. fewer things for the bad guys to attack).

For advice on upgrading or switching to an alternative reader, see the bit at the bottom of this blog post.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/01/even_more_serious_adobe_vulner.html?nav=rss_blog

[LanternWaste]

1. Can I safely infer...

Can I safely infer that hackers are now beginning to target applications rather than specific operating systems?

In other words, does this mean that regardless of the OS I use, the safety issues may start appearing in applications?

[twilight_sailing]

2. A tip from the Lounge

I hated Adobe and asked around the Lounge for a free, simple replacement for a .pdf reader.

Foxit.

It's great.

[Tangledog]

3. Twilight gets it right

Foxit has opened every .pdf I've ever tried, and has about 2% of the resource footprint of Adobe's bloatware.

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/default.htm

Usual disclaimers apply. Never even met anybody from the company.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

5. This place is great!

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:
I'm tired of adobe bloatware too. I just threw Adobe out the window :tv: and installed Foxit. It is very fast opening pdf's.

Thanks for the tip!

[William Seger]

6. Very nice! Here's a tip for Firefox users...

Apparently the Foxit freeware version doesn't have a Firefox browser extension (plugin), but I found another extension that handles PDF downloads (and has built-in HTML conversion, too) which will let you set Foxit as the PDF reader to automatically open in another window:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/636/

Still have the excessive download times for PDF files, but Foxit starts up fast after that!

[William Seger]

4. I HATE pdf on the web

I suppose it's fine for what it was intended for -- printed documents -- but on the web, the bloated file sizes and clunky interface make it a real pain in the ass.