Posted 10/09/09 at 03:59:00 PM by Paul Lilly

If it seems like Adobe's Acrobat Reader is constantly under attack, well, that's because there's some truth to it. The latest threat comes in the form of another zero-day bug being exploited in targeted attacks, Adobe said.

Not a whole lot of information has been made available on the newest threat, though according to an advisory from VUPEN Security, the vulnerability in question is an unspecified memory corruption error that occurs when users open a specially crafted PDF file. VUPEN says the bug can be exploited remotely.

"Adobe plans to resolve this issue as part of the upcoming Adobe Reader and Acrobat quarterly update, scheduled for release on October 13," blogged David Lenoe of the Adobe Product Security Incident Response Team. "Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.1.3 customers with DEP (Data Execution Prevention) enabled on Windows Vista will be protected from this exploit."

In the meantime, Johannes Ullrich, a researcher with the SANS Institute, says users can avoid the potential threat by first converting PDFs into another format, like Postscript, and then back into PDF form. At the same time, Ullrich warns this isn't 100 percent certain to remove the exploit and could actually infect the machine mucking around with the file. Fantastic.

Anyone else using Foxit Software's super-lean freebie PDF reader, Foxit Reader?

Read More

Posted 09/01/09 at 03:30:38 PM by Josh Kampschmidt

Have you always wished you could merge, encrypt or just manipulate a PDF file? Editing PDFs has always been possible with Adobe’s software, but not everyone can afford the steep price of Adobe’s professional suite. But there are actually several pieces of software that will let you deftly manipulate Adobe’s proprietary Portable Document Format. In this guide, we will show you a few ways you can manipulate a PDF file without investing in Acrobat Professional. To start, here’s an overview of the free software that you’ll need.

PDF Split and Merge

As the name implies, this program allows you to split and merge a PDF. However, it has a few limitations. This program will not split or merge protected PDF files (which are password-protected). If you want to split and merge PDFs that you have created, the program should work fine.

Read on for the rest of the guide!

Read More

Posted 08/26/09 at 09:11:58 AM by Paul Lilly

Earlier this year, Adobe said it will stick to a quarterly relese schedule for security updates, but apparently that isn't nearly enough. According to research published by Trusteer, 79.5 percent of the 2.5 million users of their Rapport security service still run a vulnerable version of Adobe Flash and 83.5 percent run a vulnerable version of Acrobat.

"Two weeks after Adobe released a critical patch for Flash and Acrobat Reader our research shows that almost 80 percent of Internet users are still vulnerable. This is the biggest security hole on the Internet today and the failure of Adobe to address it in a timely manner is extremely troubling," Trusteer wrote in its report.

Trusteer was critical of Adobe's update mechanism, saying that while Adobe's Flash site identified machines that weren't running the latest version of Flash, it failed to issue a notification that the system is at risk and  "did not strongly urge that the update be installed."

Read the full report in PDF form here, and trade in that bloated Acrobat Reader for a leaner alternative here.

Read More

Posted 02/27/09 at 03:13:08 PM by Mark Edward Soper

Ouch! It's been a bad week for Adobe Acrobat and Reader users, DailyTech's Jason Mick reports. Some visitors to eweek.com viewed PDF-based ads that attempted to redirect readers to malicious websites and then tried to download Bloodhound.Exploit.213. This vulnerability affects only Acrobat and Reader 8.12 and earlier and was patched back in November with version 8.13, but not everyone's gotten around to updating their Adobe products yet. eWeek's pulled the offending ads, and Adobe was already offering a fix - and that's the good news.

The bad news? There's an even more serious flaw on the loose that targets all versions of Acrobat and Reader, including version 9.0. There are no updates yet (the update for version 9 is expected by March 11, but version 7 and 8 users must wait a bit longer). So, what can you do in the meantime? Lots of MaximumPC readers recommend the free Foxit Reader, but if you must use Adobe, join us after the jump for workarounds that can protect you in the meantime.

Read More

Posted 07/02/08 at 02:24:49 PM by Mark Edward Soper

Adobe makes the wait for Reader 9 a short one, rolling out the companion to its heavily upgraded Acrobat 9 family just days after releasing Acrobat 9. Reader 9 supports all of the new multimedia features in Acrobat 9, including embedded Flash videos, and like Acrobat 9, loads much faster than its predecessor. Download it here.

Planning to try Acrobat 9 and Reader 9? Happy with third-party PDF readers? Give us your thoughts after the break.

Read More

Posted 06/26/08 at 02:27:24 PM by Mark Edward Soper

If you're running Acrobat or Reader 7.x or 8.x, the bad guys have you in their sights with an in-the-wild exploit that targets a JavaScript handling vulnerability. This vulnerability is cross-platform: this time, MacOS and Windows users alike need to update their installations. 

To find out how to get the updates you need to protect your system, keep reading.

Read More