Beware a man who buys pixels in barrels - Bill Jackson
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Adobe rushes out Reader and Acrobat Flash fixes
NEXT WEEK Adobe will rush out patches for its PDF software products two weeks early, after critical vulnerabilities were found in Flash.
Usually Adobe follows a Microsoft-style quarterly patch cycle, but this problem has been deemed so serious that it will be bringing out updates originally scheduled for July 13 on June 29.
The patches relate to a vulnerability originally found in versions of Flash Player for Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris operating systems that is already being used by hackers to attack users.
Adobe already fixed the flaw in Flash Player by simply releasing a new version, at the time not offering any workarounds for its PDF products even though it admitted hackers were taking advantage of it. Because Reader and Acrobat support Flash, they are vulnerable to the same sort of attacks.
The problem resides in the authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Flash, which can cause a crash and potentially allow hackers to take control of the affected system. The attacks that have been seen hit users browsing dodgy websites.
Adobe's PDF software has had its flaws, hence the need for a quarterly patch cycle. But it is fairly rare to see Adobe rush out a patch due to a serious vulnerabilty that hackers are already exploiting. µ
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This is one of many reasons I find it very hard to justify paying for software from these retail giants. Buying a product and not knowing if down the road your being hacked into and all the anti virus and malware programs cannot help you. I'll stay with "Try before I buy" for as long as I can "Try" the program, that way I can't get pissed off at the company for flawed software. I don't know if things like this can ever be fixed because of the connection the programs have to have (for the benefit of the company)to access the internet.
Does anybody on this planet still display pdf's in their browser? Or use adobe's reader? Strange.
Not to mention flashblock for flash, but that isn't foolproof of course.
Utterly Utterly Pointless.
Nope, Foxit has had security problems as well. Better use something FOSS, like Evince.
Actually I'd avoid foxit too as it has suffered in the past from some of the same flaws as Acrobat Reader.
Sumatra is my pdf viewer of choice at the moment, though it can struggle a bit when printing large docs.
If software makers did a better job we would have a lot fewer updates. I am sick of windows 7 updates already. If you don't update you risk attacks. The only OS that has the fewest is Ubuntu. Windows has to update there updates.
anyone with half a brain avoids acrobat like the plague
get foxit instead and forget these type of problems
That this bug is really big!