Adobe to patch Black Hat bugs on Thursday Adobe plans to release out-of-sequence updates on Thursday (19 August) designed to patch security holes in its Acrobat and Reader PDF software revealed at the Black Hat conference earlier this month. Updates for Adobe Reader 9.3.3 for Windows, Macintosh and Unix will accompany Adobe Acrobat 9.3.3 for Windows and Macintosh as …
I have to deal with far more infections and compromised machines which I've traced back to Adobe than Microsoft, this has been the case for roughly 18 months now. Flash is ubiquitous and, from the attacker's perspective, has an advantage over MS in that the update process for Flash and Reader is frankly piss poor. Adobe need to get their act together and release a bundled, standalone update utility that (by default) forces the installation of their frequent critical patches. Doubtless the enthusiasts will be up in arms but as long as it's configurable can be disabled by script/policy for business deployments I'd rather put up with some whiney blog posts from people bitching that they want to control the patch revisions on their machines than continually get spammed over MSN etc by people who've been hijacked through an out of date version of flash player.
Modatrix request: a la BillG & his Jobsiness please can we have some sort of devil themed Adobe icon to pick from? They're getting right on my tits.
They update themselves "when they feel like it" and each individual app only updates itself. It's also made clear how important the update is. Even Apple have released a Windows "all our software" updater (even though it was nefariously used to distribute safari to all and sundry).
Windows Update & WSUS integration for all software vendors would be ideal of course but as it stands I can't see it happening. I've installed the Secunia PSI on all the computers my less-savvy friends and family use to ensure that they're warned promptly when issues arise and updates need applying.
I was checking my Flash Player installation at the weekend and discovered that I had no fewer than five instances of Flash Player installed. Apparently when Flash updates - on my Intel Mac, anyway - it doesn't actually trash the earlier version of itself, but simply installs into a new folder and sometimes into new and exciting locations away from the original Flash Player installation.
Better still, it also dumps a bunch of .exe files into folders it creates in various locations. What the hell is that about? Would they be required if I had Windows in a partition on my HD, perhaps? If the updater even worked properly would be great.
Oh, and if anyone has an intelligent answer to the question about why Adobe feels it is perfectly all right to charge very nearly twice as much for its feature-packed yet surprisingly lacklustre Creative Suite packages in the the UK than it does in the US, I'd love to hear from you.
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