Adobe (finally) adds security sandbox to Reader At long last, Adobe Systems has added a new security protection to Windows versions of its ubiquitous document reader that's designed to lock down one of the world's most exploited applications. The so-called sandbox, isolates Reader from sensitive Windows operations, such as the changing of operating system registry settings …
From Adobe's website: (http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/837/cpsid_83708.html)
Acrobat and Reader X products
Latest release: Acrobat Pro and Standard X for English, French, German, and Japanese, November 15 2010, Reader X November 18.
Date Ver. Type Focus
Nov 2010 10.0 Major A major release with new and improved features. Reader and support for other languages have a phased rollout. Acrobat EFGJ: Nov 15, Reader EFGJ: Nov 18, Acrobat and Reader for all other languages: Mid December.
All I had to do is click on the help menu and then select Check for updates...
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Windows also has a generic solution, through the "Protect my PC" check-box in the RunAs dialog. It certainly breaks apps that expect to be able to write to the user's own profile (file system and registry) but I've never seen a precise description.
Of course, the problem is that your average user *wants* some random PDF to be able to "do whatever it needs to do" to their system. There's no protection against that.
I tried to make Evince the default .PDF handler here. It worked nicely until people tried to print the PDF files created by out document scanner. It turns out that Evince won't reliably print images in documents.
Just why they want to make a paper copy of a document that we had scanned so that we could get rid of the paper copy (or at least put it in cold storage) is a conversation for another day. Today's conversation is about that "crappy open source software that IT are trying to force us to use".
I've always been pro-Adobe reader, even if it was bloated.
But since 9.x, it's beyond a joke. Even by my jokey standards.
And I haven't even started on Adobe DLM. What the hell were they thinking?
Google it, not one freaking bloody good word about it.
Thanks Adobe, for making my choice that much easier by stopping me from getting it in the first place.
And no, I don't use FoxIt. Tried it, vomited, and kept looking.
That's really a nice idea. First, create a reader that works. Then, add bloat. Then, more bloat. Then, download manager, toolbars, spyware, and so on. Then, a little more bloat.
In the end, add even more bloat to keep the bugs inside.
TOTAL FAILURE!
I use Linux, so I don't care. But when I have to use Windows, I use something else to read PDF files.
"And no, I don't use FoxIt. Tried it, vomited, and kept looking."
In my experience, FoxIT displays the text and diagrams of any PDF you feed it and I can't think of anything else I'd *want* an application to do with a PDF.
What is it that you want your PDF viewer to do, the absence of which is sufficiently nauseating that you throw up? I'm genuinely curious.
My feeling is that MS is actually much better than Adobe, despite the fact that MS is vastly inferior to Linux.
Just have a look a the Adobe Flash Manager, which lets you choose update checking intervals. The shortest time interval is SEVEN days. MS and Linux can push a patch in a matter of hours, Adobe needs at least a week.
Certainly enough time for the bad guys to distribute a Flash virus via Doubleclick et al.
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