Adobe Warns of Critical Zero Day Vulnerability 236
wiredmikey writes "Adobe issued an advisory today on a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2011-2462) that has come under attack in the wild. According to Adobe, the issue is a U3D memory corruption vulnerability that can be exploited to cause a crash and permit an attacker to hijack a system. So far, there are reports the vulnerability is being exploited in limited, targeted attacks against Adobe Reader 9.x on Windows. However, the bug also affects Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.4.6 and earlier 9.x versions for UNIX and Macintosh computers, as well as Adobe Reader X (10.1.1) and Acrobat X (10.1.1) and earlier 10.x versions on Windows and Mac. Patches for Windows and Mac users of Adobe Reader X and Acrobat X will come on the next quarterly update, scheduled for Jan. 10, 2012."
Listed mitigation: Adobe Reader X Protected Mode (Score:5, Insightful)
Why on earth isn't "Adobe Reader X Protected Mode" the default?
Re:Listed mitigation: Adobe Reader X Protected Mod (Score:5, Funny)
Good I stopped using that blob...
Re:Listed mitigation: Adobe Reader X Protected Mod (Score:5, Insightful)
It has a 4.4 MB setup file, compared to Adobe Reader's 40.5 MB, for Windows 7. Installed size is 8.4 MB, whereas Adobe Reader requires 335 MB of available disk space.
Adobe PDF Reader - now with 10-40x the size of what's *really* needed! ***Bonus*** - Includes Critical 0 Day vulnerability, @ no extra charge!!!
What more could you ask for?
Re:Listed mitigation: Adobe Reader X Protected Mod (Score:5, Funny)
Adobe PDF Reader - now with 10-40x the size of what's *really* needed! ***Bonus*** - Includes Critical 0 Day vulnerability, @ no extra charge!!!
What more could you ask for?
Ummm, could you maybe toss in an eternally running updater?
And if the same people could come up with a useless "download manager", well that would just be peachy!
Re:Listed mitigation: Adobe Reader X Protected Mod (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget the shell extension in windows, that enables those zero-day vulns to take effect by just hovering over the file! And unlike the updater and preloader, you can't turn this off without manually meddling with the registry.
Re:Listed mitigation: Adobe Reader X Protected Mod (Score:5, Informative)
That is not actually true. Adobe Reader is a "conforming implementation" of the ISO 32000 PDF specification. As such, it must support features that your 8.4 MB reader cannot possibly see (such as the ability to pull from CRL's when encountering a digital signature). I used to work for Adobe and I am not here to defend them but in all fairness, you must distinguish the difference between conforming and non-conforming implementations of PDF before comparing.
Duane
I *prefer* non-conforming (Score:5, Insightful)
> you must distinguish the difference between conforming and non-conforming implementations of PDF before comparing
Your point is valid, however, how much of that ISO standard is, itself, "ooooh, shiny"-ness which is one of the reasons why Reader has so many more possible places of failure? Before discovering better alternatives for reading PDFs under Windows, the first thing I would do to Adobe Reader was to disable scripting support inside PDF documents.
In other words, I prefer the non-conforming, because that means that (there is a chance that) the implementers might actually be ignoring stupid things which Adobe pushed into the PDF standard which shouldn't be there.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You're saying pulling from CRLs requires that many more megabytes?
Let's be blunt here. Adobe Reader is an obscene piece of bloatware, packaged with all sorts of worthless cruft like the absolutely moronic download manager. I suspect that software developers who were actually interested in delivering a decent product rather than trying to push their vast library of even more bloated applications would try a little harder to bring the size of things down, if for no other reason than an abiding sense of shame
Re: (Score:3)
ISO conformity is no excuse for the amount of vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat software. Unless the vulnerability is specified in the ISO.
Re:Listed mitigation: Adobe Reader X Protected Mod (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the old Microsoft syndrome again...
Take software which was designed for a non networked, single user standalone environment...
Throw it onto a hostile network like the Internet...
Then make sure that 95% of systems run exactly the same software...
If there was a more even marketshare of PDF viewers out there, then they would be far less attractive to target.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Dont forget its a zero day vulnerability that is fixed in the next quarterly update.
Re:Listed mitigation: Adobe Reader X Protected Mod (Score:5, Informative)
In my experience it can (or used to) break things when interacting with other programs.
It broke my LaTeX editor. Couldn't compile a document and automatically have it open in Reader. After some fighting, I think I got it to open, but if you make some edits and recompile... it quickly errors out if you don't manually and completely exit out of Reader first. It's really annoying. Spent far too long reading up on how Reader is supposed to interact with other software and setting my editor to try different commands invoking Reader. No dice, and it looked like the documentation wasn't up to date for all the changes in X yet. But turn off protected mode, and it worked just fine.
Granted, they might have fixed that in the mean time, I've not used it in a couple months, and don't even have Reader installed any more...
Re: (Score:3)
I'm actually in the process of becoming Adobe free. No Reader, no Flash, and hopefully my system will run better.
Re:Listed mitigation: Adobe Reader X Protected Mod (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of our technical manuals come in PDF form now, but thank God for Okular. It has really, really improved. :)
Re: (Score:3)
Did that 4 years ago.
TBH, I've found that flash is hard to do without in some cases, so it is a good idea to have a CPU that supports condoms, so you can run flash in a condom. (condom == Virtual Machine)
Just keep a copy of the base image, and overwrite it whenever it gets too infected for use.
Re: (Score:2)
Why on earth isn't "Adobe Reader X Protected Mode" the default?
Wouldn't matter since Reader X crashes on every XP system I've tried it on. That leaves me with Reader 9, and I don't really care to hear any comments about why I shouldn't be on XP. It's not dead or out of support yet and I have my reasons to still be running it.
My question is: after all of these years, why can't Adobe write a secure version of reader. I mean it's just one program to do basically one simple enough thing. Are they too busy on new development to actually fix their existing product?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
It is the default already (I checked using my copy of Adobe Reader X), which is part of why they are delaying the patch for this version until next month.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"By default, Adobe Reader 10.0 enables Protected Mode"
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/860/cpsid_86063.html [adobe.com]
Oh adobe... (Score:4, Informative)
You can pretty well set your watch by adobe exploits. Get it together, guys...
Look at the credits for Adobe Reader. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're wondering "How can this happen?", all you need to do is look at the credits of Acrobat Reader. Notice that many of the names are quite clearly Indian. Then it all makes sense.
Re:Look at the credits for Adobe Reader. (Score:5, Informative)
Why is the parent modded flamebait? S/he's telling the truth. We just discussed this very issue: Does Outsourcing Programming Really Save Money? [slashdot.org].
Somebody please mod the parent up. Sometimes the truth isn't pretty, but it's still the truth. I don't care if feelings get hurt by it. It's still the truth.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Look at the credits for Adobe Reader. (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd have to be nuts to want Reader unless you simply have no other choice.
Acrobat 10. Production environment. Multiple servers for remote desktop sessions. Have to have it. Receive secure documents all the time for markup and endorsements and Foxit can't even open it. Let's not even talk about 3rd party PDF support for electronic signatures from capture pads.
The NERVE of those fuckers to announce a zero-day exploit in the wild with an expected fix date in a quarterly update.
What the fuck are they smoking? It's the 6th of December you sadistic moronic fucktards. This is the dark side of vendor lock-in. Till that update I have to wonder about the thousands of PDF documents flowing through into the system and from emails. Believe me, there are some workers that will open anything in an email. So it is a real risk already.
Not that I don't normally, but there is a big difference between a possible threat and a known one.
It's just amazing for them to announce that with all the business customers they have. The unmitigated gall of those bastards.
Re:Look at the credits for Adobe Reader. (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree 110%.
It's a blatant and inexcusable display of negligence on Adobe's part to schedule an update over a month after telling us that a REMOTE EXECUTION EXPLOIT is confirmed, and is being exploited in the wild. Again, with confirmation. To add to that, this isn't even something where you can advise everyone to turn off javascript and pray everyone follows your instructions while keeping an eye on traffic. It's nothing short of nightmare to be honest. The fact that this software is installed on everything from a consumer's new laptop or desktop, to a hell of a lot of government agencies doesn't sit well with me either.
Re: (Score:2)
"[T]he company noted that Adobe Reader X Protected Mode and Acrobat X Protected View offer some mitigation against the exploit."
I'm guessing that while the bug exists in X, it is not exploitable, or at least there is no code in the wild that is able to exploit it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Look at the credits for Adobe Reader. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because anytime you single out a creed, religion, race, or other general status, anyone belonging to said group interprets it as a personal attack and employs all possible methods to censor the shit out of said perceived attacker. It's like a biological kill-switch.
Re:Look at the credits for Adobe Reader. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Look at the credits for Adobe Reader. (Score:4, Informative)
I work for a media company in Los Angeles, and just about all of the developers in our Burbank office working on our flagship media management software are Indian. Our facility in Bangalore is where we send the actual media work if we can (transcoding, editing, etc.). But I think most of the software development stays in the States, but is done by Indians (with a few Chinese and other Asians).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The term you're looking for is "fact", not "assumption".
The industry as a whole has now had 10 to 15 years of experience with Indian software developers. That's actually quite a long time, given the relatively young age of the industry. Yet for every successful project we hear about, there are literally tens of thousands of horror stories. That's clearly not a balanced ratio.
There comes a point when repeated and consistent observations must be accepted as the truth, even if this may be a painful truth to ac
Re:Look at the credits for Adobe Reader. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to agree mostly, but differentiate a little. I have actually worked with a couple of very talented Indian software engineers - more talented and experienced than myself, sometimes. They weren't working for an outsourcing company, though; they were full-time hires. Good Indian software engineers have a tendency to go the same places good American software engineers do: companies that value their talent and who are willing to pay for it. They just have a marginally harder time doing it due to US immigration law. (Myself, I'd rather have them fully naturalized as soon as reasonable - I can compete with them better when their wages haven't artificially depressed by the monopsonistic exploitation of their labor associated with the immigration game).
Anyway. It's already a lot easier to find a lousy software developer than to find a good one here in the US. Outsourcing to India as part of a management-driven process? Yeah, I'm going to laugh at the quality of the results in advance, please. As for Adobe employees working on Acrobat... let's just say their product doesn't do too much to promote the idea that they're competent.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I know plenty of Indian programmers who got their H1B visas, live in America, and write shitty code. They are valued because they can churn out products quickly, but for a very costly maintenance value. YMMV - there are plenty of developers of all races that write shitty code.
Re: (Score:3)
Indian names = outsourced, two-bit programmers in an Indian code sweatshop.
As un-PC as it might be to say this, there's some truth in it. Many people have been burned at one time or another by cheap software, especially from Indian outsourcing shops, so like it or not the meme has currency.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
>You can pretty well set your watch by adobe exploits. Get it together, guys...,
My watch doesn't display milliseconds.
Re:Oh adobe... (Score:5, Funny)
You can pretty well set your watch by adobe exploits. Get it together, guys...
You actually have several options: If you want it to run fast, set by exploits. If you want it to run slow, set by fixes.
Re: (Score:2)
You can pretty well set your watch by adobe exploits. Get it together, guys...
You actually have several options: If you want it to run fast, set by exploits. If you want it to run slow, set by fixes.
Yep. I believe the Mayan calendar cycle is based on Adobe patches....
Patched when? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Patched when? (Score:5, Informative)
If you follow the "exploited to cause a crash ..." link in the initial Slashdot item, you will see that a fix to Acrobat Reader 9 will be available by this coming Monday. You will also see that, unless you disable Protected View in Acrobat Reader 10, you are not vulnerable and thus can wait a month.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, Adobe Reader X is vulnerable, but Protected View isolates exploit code.
Re:Patched when? (Score:4, Interesting)
Jan. 10, 2012? Why not immediately? Do Adobe coders suck that bad...
Honestly I think when a major vulnerability is found, companies should fix it immediately or face penalties.
You naive sod. You think the DEVELOPERS determine the release schedule? For all you know there are developers there with a fix ready and tested that are agitating and itching for it to go out.
Re: (Score:2)
Clearly they are too busy coding up new vulnerabilities to have the time for fixes...
A lack of diversity... (Score:5, Insightful)
...leads to increased vulnerability, whether in biology or in software.
Although there are alternatives to Adobe Reader, none of them is good enough to gain significant market share. And Adobe does everything it can to make competing with it more difficult. So a key piece of software used by a large majority of computer users is bloated beyond belief and so riddled with vulnerabilities that it seems there's a new every day. It sucks, but it's hardly surprising.
On the web, as in politics, we get what we deserve - or, in this case, we get what other web users deserve, because they vastly outnumber us.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Not good enough alternatives? FoxIT reader is better imho. Heck, the Ubuntu default document viewer works fine for me. It's a shame that "adobe" has become synonymous with "pdf".
Re: (Score:2)
Another vote for Foxit
I remove adobe PDF from any systems I administer and install Foxit
Re: (Score:2)
foxit is a little safer, imho, for windows, but doesn't support everything adobe reader does. not that 99% of the people need those extras, though...
we have run across a few instances where adobe reader (even latest version at the time) would have problems opening up certain files (electronic bank statements were the biggest problem here.. ever since the bank talked dad into going with online-only statements, he'd have problems every month).. while any version of foxit we tried opened them up just fine.
howe
Re:A lack of diversity... (Score:5, Informative)
If you look under the hood, Linux has the same lack of diversity in PDF viewers that Windows does: almost everything is just a frontend for the Poppler library. If a security hole is found in eg. kpdf, it's a good bet that the hole is also present in epdfview or xpdf.
Re:A lack of diversity... (Score:5, Informative)
I recall the Adobe loading screens on older Acrobat versions. One time while waiting for Acrobat to load its bloated carcass into memory I actually paid attention to the loading messages and noticed "movie.api" among others being loaded. That was the nail in the coffin.
While switching to non-Adobe PDF software may not be in the power of everyone, you can blacklist the Adobe PDF plugin from running in your web-browser. Apart from improving your internet experience it may also help prevent some drive-by PDF exploits.
Re: (Score:2)
I just use the default PDF things that come with Debian Squeeze and OpenOffice. I can read and print anything to PDF (and I can even create PDFs in my PHP code). If you want all the bloat that comes with Adobe software, then yeah there are no alternatives. If you just want to read/write basic PDF documents, then there are enough if you know where to look.
Without a significant official repository of FOSS and non-free packages that can be browsed with something like Synaptic for Debian, Windows users in parti
Re: (Score:3)
Some people complain that they can't do everything on Linux that they can do with Windows, but apart from specific games (I love StarCraft)...
FYI, both SC1 and SC2 run flawlessly in Wine, I've been playing^Wtesting both for years.
Re:A lack of diversity... (Score:5, Interesting)
Evince [gnome.org] (gtk) and Okular [kde.org] (ex-kpdf, iirc, Qt) both seem pretty usable to me.
At work, I'm stuck with windows, and the Evince win32 port seems to work quite well there too. Only issue I ran into was that be default it tried to print things in landscape mode or something like that, and I didn't notice.
A nice feature is that it does djvu and postscript as well, instead of having multiple readers (although I seem to think ps might not work with windows in default, probably relies on ghostscript or so..?).
Re:A lack of diversity... (Score:5, Insightful)
Although there are alternatives to Adobe Reader, none of them is good enough to gain significant market share.
Are you kidding me? Acrobat is such a steaming pile of crap that it has bred a completely misplaced hatred of PDF in most Windows users. Ever seen a Slashdot summary with a "(warning, PDF)" note after a link? Only Acrobat can manage to bog down a brand new system opening a 1 page PDF, every other PDF reader in the world will open it instantaneously.
If anything, Acrobat has single handedly painted PDF into the very niche corner that it's in now. PDF is a good format hobbled by a hopelessly lousy reference implementation.
Re: (Score:3)
They improved it in Adobe Reader X by among other things finally showing a progress bar.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm hoping they choose an alternative product, cause I have a large number of Acrobat purchases to make if not :|
FYI: U3D = Universal 3D (Score:5, Informative)
According to the Wikipedia article on Universal 3D [wikipedia.org]:
The format is natively supported by the PDF format and 3D objects in U3D format can be inserted into PDF documents and interactively visualized by Acrobat Reader (since version 7).
and
There are four editions to date.
The first edition is supported by many/all of the various applications mentioned below. It is capable of storing vertex based geometry, color, textures, lighting, bones, and transform based animation.
The second and third editions correct some errata in the first edition, and the third edition also adds the concept of vendor specified blocks. One such block widely deployed is the RHAdobeMesh block, which provides a more compressed alternative to the mesh blocks defined in the first edition. Deep Exploration and PDF3D-SDK can author this data, and Adobe Acrobat and Reader 8.1 can read this data.
The fourth edition provides definitions for higher order primitives - curved surfaces.
I'm guessing it's the vendor specified blocks from the 3rd edition that are causing the problem.
Re:FYI: U3D = Universal 3D (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I'd suggest disabling advanced PDF features like this one by default, and allow it to be enabled by the user when necessary.
Too late (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
They are doing an out of cycle update, but only for Adobe Reader 9 for Windows because that is the version currently exploited.
What a mess: No patch for 9 and no IFilter for X (Score:2)
The summary makes no mention of a patch for Reader 9, but some of us have been stuck with Reader 9 because Reader X has no IFilter to allow PDF indexing by search tools [adobe.com] (even worse, installing Reader X removes any older IFilter that you might already have). So we get to choose between having a security hole or an IFilter. Thanks, Adobe.
Re:What a mess: No patch for 9 and no IFilter for (Score:4, Informative)
OK, the summary omits it, but the article [adobe.com] says "We are in the process of finalizing a fix for the issue and expect to make available an update for Adobe Reader 9.x and Acrobat 9.x for Windows no later than the week of December 12, 2011" so Reader 9 will be fixed after all.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
actually, acrobat/reader will do that too (Score:2)
First, select two page view: view->page display->two up
Then, change your full screen preferences: edit->preferences->full screen->fill screen with one page at a time (uncheck)
Now when you go to full screen mode you'll get two pages.
I haven't updated Reader in several months... (Score:3)
... because Adobe broke the search feature in the versions after 9.4.0 (both 9.x and 10.x) If you search in a .PDF in the newer versions, it will fail to highlight at least some of the matches.
This is a pretty huge deal and it would be astonishing if it were still broken. Does anybody know if they've fixed the bug?
Mac? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd be curious to know how many Mac users install Adobe Reader at all, since Preview does a very good job of basic PDF handling - and loads almost instantly, as opposed to Reader's geologic-era-scale load time.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Strange - i have not yet run into a mac user that doesn't clickclick it first. And lets not forget that Mail shows it inline if its single page. Also - for windows users - if you need it to just see bills etc, Chrome handles PDF viewing internally.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I was forced to install it recently. Some PDFs from my state government required it. If I tried to open them in Preview, it complained that it needed a newer version of Acrobat Reader. So I installed it, printed what I needed, then removed it.
A lot of less technical folks though would have just kept it. Assuming the figured out that they needed to install it in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
a2ps ca do some a amazing stripping; I use it when a client can't handle a scanner well enough to strip permissions control that stops me from filing dockets.
hawk
Re: (Score:2)
With my client's three years old MacBook Pro and Mac OS X 10.5.8, he needed it for some weird Adobe format (forgot which it is). It was like an interactive book/slideshow.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have adobe reader, but acrobat pro 8; it came with my snapscan.
It does a co hole of things that preview doesn't do or do well, including actually modifying documents (ok, it doesn't Dothan well,but preview doesn't do it at all, save for manipulating entire pages).
It redacts (properly, now).
It does better at n-up with small margins, but not as well as accorded Linux.
It does o r.
hawk
Re:Mac? -- RTF please (Score:4, Informative)
Preview works very well for reading, but Acrobat Pro is currently the best Mac solution for authoring PDFs. Unfortunately. But there you have it. Open a 5mb PDF in word. Edit. Save. Wow, look at that, did you notice, now it's 45mb? It seems that acrobat pro is one of the few editors that recompresses. Now watch the secretary fill out that PDF form in Word and try to email it back to you.
PDF - Portable Document Format. It does a good job at being universally supported, for reading anyway. Do you want that, or maybe something else proprietary like DOC? (or even better, DOCX) You may hate the reader but the format is very good. It's just insanely bloated with features that are neigh impossible to secure. (it's about as good an idea as when MS added auto running macros to their DOC and XLS spec) So you can count on there being a new exploit almost constantly, and as we're seeing here, a critical exploit every quarter or so.
I personally do as much as possible in RTF format. It's fairly well supported, and doesn't have security-undermining features in the standard. On the mac, the bundled TextEdit does a marvelous job with RTF, reads and authors in it, and has very similar functionality to PDF. I just wish clicking on an RTF document on a web page would display it inline instead of downloading the bloddy thing to the desktop.
Re: (Score:2)
Installed it recently to read annotated PDFs I receive sometimes. I find that preview does a poor job displaying these annotations and won't even display some at all.
I think the time has come for "PDF Lite" (Score:4, Interesting)
... or maybe just go back a few versions. No movies, no scripting, no interactivity other than hyperlinks and form elements, no live connection to the Web, no motion of any kind. Just vector shapes and a handful of well-known image formats. Please, just go back to what PDF was originally supposed to be: a virtual print that looked the same anywhere, including a small handful of well-known image formats. Oh, and make it "safe", which it never would have occurred to me to ask for in the past but I guess we need to specifically request that that these days. (Hi, GM, can you please make a car without an array of eight-inch spike in the middle of the steering wheel?) And, as long as I've got this crackpipe, I'll ask them to make the spec simple enough and open enough that anyone can make a program to generate them or read them.
I don't know what features Adobe is packing into the spec these days but to the best of my knowledge there's nothing I do today that couldn't be handled by PDF 1.2 and Acrobat 3. The only problem is, when people make PDFs, they tick the little box that says "Require Acrobat _ or greater" and I always have to update.
Why even announce this... (Score:2, Interesting)
...if you're going to follow up your "zero" day announcement to the world with a statement that your "fix" for this is to release a patch that is scheduled for release in a month or so from now. What, is patching out of cycle for a zero-day vuln suddenly against someones religion or something? That's about the only excuse that would seem somewhat sane (if you call organized religion sane) here.
If I were one of those paranoid type of guys, I would say that Adobe wrote this fucking thing themselves, and w
Re: (Score:2)
Already responded to:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2561664&cid=38287162 [slashdot.org]
(Slashdot editors, can you edit the summary?)
Good God (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
On my system it takes a good 10-15 seconds for the Acrobat Reader to display the document. There's some kind of module collection that juat takes forever to load.
I doin't have a particularly slow system either - Word documents come up in a second or two.
Re: (Score:2)
It seems like everyday is zero day for Adobe... (Score:3)
I guess all the good programmers left Adobe years ago.
Be careful of "fixes" Adobe sends you by email. (Score:5, Informative)
I and a bunch of others received emails today claiming to be from Adobe (it wasn't, as mail headers showed) that included an attachment, an .exe in a zip file.
Of course, you should never run attachments sent via email, even if the source appears trusted.
Re: (Score:2)
Attack surface (Score:5, Insightful)
I wrote it years ago, but it's still quite relevant:
http://www.cert.org/blogs/certcc/2009/06/vulnerabilities_and_software_a.html [cert.org]
Coding quality and exploit mitigations aside, there's something to be said for the size of the software that you're installing. The more code that's there, the more there is to attack. If you're using Reader, you might ask, why is there a 3D rendering engine in my PDF reader? Or maybe even do something about it.
WTF? (Score:3)
Why is it under Preferences | General instead of, I don't know, crazy idea, under Preferences | Security ?
And 4 weeks? They're leaving that hole open for 4 fscking weeks?
1- Announce a security flaw
2- Leave it open for a month
3- ???
4- Profit!
Two thoughts.. (Score:2)
2.) Zero Day is undoubtedly one of the most idiotic labels in the computing sector.
Re:Release dates?? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes.
The attack can be stopped using their Protected Mode. Versions that ship with the protected mode will not be addressed to specifically mitigate this attack until later, with Adobe recommending everyone turn on protected mode to protect them in the mean time.
Whether or not that's a reasonable reaction is a whole different question.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes.
The attack can be stopped using their Protected Mode. Versions that ship with the protected mode will not be addressed to specifically mitigate this attack until later, with Adobe recommending everyone turn on protected mode to protect them in the mean time.
Whether or not that's a reasonable reaction is a whole different question.
Meh. Just switch to a security-conscious web browser like Opera. It lets me browse with plugins (acrobat, flash, java, etc.) disabled, cookies disabled, javascript disabled, and send-referrer disabled. I enable them on a site-by-site basis. Opera handles it natively and beautifully.
You people still using 20th-century web browsers are in serious peril.
Re: (Score:2)
Windows port of Evince is somewhat lacking, especially given it's way of handling file associations and compressed comic book files.
Frankly, if it came out of the box as a portable touch-nothing install and had cbz and cbr support, I'd probably use it and drop Foxit.
Re: (Score:3)
Evince isn't wonderful, even under Linux. When it opens a document it auto-sizes its window, (usually inappropriately), regardless of the window size it was last set to, which in my case is always 'maximized'. And it doesn't have tabs, (it seems that none of the Linux readers does), which is really a pain when you have 10 or more documents open at once, as I often do.
I've tried all or almost all of the PDF readers available for Linux, and I have yet to find one that I'd even call OK, much less good. I don't
Re: (Score:2)
Evince on current Ubuntu remembers its window size, if that's any help.
Re: (Score:2)
Layers have been a standard part of the pdf spec for years, but the only pdf reader that supports them properly, to the best of my knowledge, is Acrobat.
Re: (Score:2)
By "they" I meant the Malware writers and general evil types, not Adobe. I know how grey all of this can seem though.
Speaking of grey...
(cue fall guy wearing Adobe employee badge getting arrested on the evening news on suspicion of writing malicious code...)
"I swear! They told me to write it! I swear they did! Didn't you guys get the memo too?!? Why isn't anyone LISTENING TO ME??!!"