“Some of those features, including Reader’s support of JavaScript and the PDF specification’s support for the /Launch function, have been exploited by attackers in increasing numbers since 2008,” Keizer reports. “According to tallies by antivirus vendor McAfee, PDF exploits were up more than eight times in 2009 compared to the year before, a trend that has continued into 2010.”
Keizer reports, “Office cannot open PDF documents without third-party software or add-ons… Sullivan compared his vision of a Windows PDF viewer to Preview, the application that Apple includes with Mac OS X.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dominick P.” for the heads up.]
To those who are flaming Adobe in this forum, do you even know who, or what Adobe is, or are you just following MDNs lead, to score political points?
Is it possible to hate something you don’t know about? Would an iPhoner possess more hate for Adobe than say, a Mac user?
The technology behind PDF replaced the Mac’s bit-map screen technology in the late Nineties. Before that, Adobe’s postscript tech was the magic behind the WYSIWYG pagination in Apple’s laser printers. It stands to reason that, that kind of scalable, spot-on tech would be terrific for independent screen resolution.
I love PDFs vector graphics and its magnification properties and Previews modest editing tools. I email PDFs to my Touch all the time.
I had no idea PDFs were such a problem in the PC world. Now that Adobe and Microsoft are becoming so cozy, that might change.
But, I now certainly understand why Acrobat Pro is such a hot commodity on the torrents.
“Microsoft should add a basic PDF viewer to Windows to help protect users from the spike in attacks…”
What makes anyone think Microsoft can create anything that isn’t prone to attack? Have they ever?
I don’t use Windows and don’t care about a Windows PDF viewer. HOWEVER, Microsoft needs to put a save as PDF in their printing options so people can read what is sent without buying a Microsoft program to read the files people send over the internet. iPhone, iPad, other smart phones, … can’t always read that MS file crap that is sent to them.
It may take 5 or 10 years to purge the internet of that spyware virus infected Microsoft Windows old school PC boxes! But, some day soon, the plague will end!
“Security researcher: Microsoft should follow Apple’s lead”
The headline really could have stopped there.
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Great. The only problem being that, knowing Microsoft, if they make their own it will inevitably have lots of bugs of its own that can be exploited.
I read some time ago that Adobe’s security problems with Acrobat / Reader came from using some of Microsoft’s code directly in Adobe software. I am not a coder and i have no direct knowledge of this, but I remember reading it when the Acrobat security problems first started getting press.
Apple uses the open sourced PDF. So does all Linux distros.
Microsoft planned to use the open sourced PDF in Vista and Adobe screamed Monopoly Abuse. They were scared shitless that Acrobat would die a well deserved death.
Microsoft caved before any investigation even entered the should we or shouldn’t we investigate stage. I doubt Microsoft will try again.
@Diggitydog
I’m starting to look elsewhere for my Mac news as it’s just getting ridiculous now that MDN has positioned itself as the Mac equivalent of Der Stürmer, with Adobe it’s latest target.
I’ll give it a fortnight before I expect to hear stories of the planned boycotting of Adobe stockists and massive quantities of ‘Adobe Classroom in a book’ being burnt on huge pyres!
Clubska
I’ll help you leave. How do I set Preview as the default instead of the other guys?
MW-times: as in they are a changin’
Microsoft could probably buy foxit’s pdf viewer for Windows rather cheaply.
@clubska67
“the Mac equivalent of Der Stürmer”
My sentiments exactly, though I don’t think I’ll leave.