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Comments on: Miscreants hijacking machines via (freshly patched) Adobe flaw

Yawn 

Posted Friday 7th November 2008 19:23 GMT

Thumb Up

Glad I use a mac

Acrobat Reader? 

Posted Friday 7th November 2008 19:23 GMT

Thumb Down

Why does anyone use Acrobat Reader when Foxit Reader is out there for free?

Updates are no problem 

Posted Friday 7th November 2008 19:51 GMT

It's very easy to avoid problems updating Acrobat Reader. Just switch to Foxit instead, and open PDF files in a fraction of the time.

Gee 

Posted Friday 7th November 2008 20:24 GMT

Coat

Adobe Acrobat Reader has always been free so what's your point?

-- Mines the one with the Apple in the pocket.

Upgrade scripts 

Posted Friday 7th November 2008 20:34 GMT

Hmm. Helpful, lads.

This is a quickie script I'm using to update client pcs:

Download the standard version of Reader 9 (without Adobe Air) from:

ftp://ftp.adobe.com//pub/adobe/reader/win/9.x/9.0/enu/ AdbeRdr90_en_US_Std.exe

then you can script this silent install overnight or something:

AdbeRdr90_en_US_Std.exe /sAll /rs /l /msi /qb- /norestart

I use psexec to kick it off on each PC.

For more thorough scripts, check out http://www.appdeploy.com/packages/detail.asp?id=1328

How? 

Posted Friday 7th November 2008 21:13 GMT

Unhappy

In a corporate environment where users are not administrators of their workstations, Acrobat is a ubggre to keep updated. Anyone care to share ideas for updating 1000+ workstations?

Good ol' HTA files 

Posted Friday 7th November 2008 21:36 GMT

Stop

I saw this one coming a mile away.

Multiple updates 

Posted Friday 7th November 2008 21:52 GMT

# sysupdate="'eix sync; emerge -g world'"

sysupdate='pacman -Syu'

while read host; do ssh root@${host} ${sysupdate}; done < hosts

load up hosts and choose your poison for package management.

Is Acrobat 5 vulnerable? 

Posted Friday 7th November 2008 23:02 GMT

Stop

Acrobat 5 being the one before they introduced all the bloat (which of course is also where all the vulnerabilities came in). It's a PDF reader ffs - wtf is it doing opening anything except PDF files?

@Annonymous Coward How? 

Posted Saturday 8th November 2008 00:06 GMT

Go

Just make an OU in active directory and install the new version, you can do it department by department or whatever to save on b/w!

But I'm sure you knew all that anyway!

@Gee - free 

Posted Saturday 8th November 2008 04:28 GMT

Maybe the foxit posts should read: , and it's also free. But that's not the point.

Foxit is much smaller and much faster than the free adobe pdf reader, and (so far) less exploited.

For myself, I got tired of the constant holes in the Adobe pdf reader (now I sound like some linux zealot) and decided to try the foxit reader. I was suprised at how much smaller and faster it was (there I go again). I haven't had any problems with it so far, so now I install it on all of my machines (and again).

Good luck out there.

Foxit 

Posted Saturday 8th November 2008 11:47 GMT

I switched to foxit a year ago, some time after I started trying to strip the crap out of Acrobat Reader (Acrobat Reader Lite or something modifies the Reader), then came across Foxit. Funnily enough, Foxit is Acrobat Reader's FireFox. Cunning foxes, eh?

In a word.... 

Posted Monday 10th November 2008 03:12 GMT

Foxit

Smaller than adobe reader, loads faster than adobe reader, and apparently not quite as skanky as adobe reader.

Foxit 

Posted Monday 10th November 2008 08:28 GMT

Acrobat Reader - 33.5Mb download

Foxit - 2.57Mb Download

I've been using Foxit for over twelve months found it to be much, much quicker that Acrobat. I can't see why anybody uses Adobe's bloated (and now it seems bug-ridden) software.

Adobe ? 

Posted Monday 10th November 2008 09:02 GMT

Who still uses free stuff from Adobe ?

It's invariably bloated, full of holes, and much worse than the independent free version that does the same thing.

If you're not a publisher of PDF files, you have no use for Adobe products. Foxit is the only thing you need - and it is a lot faster and a lot more secure than Adobe products will ever be.

And it's free as well ! What more could you ask for ?

Why..? 

Posted Monday 10th November 2008 10:12 GMT

Why people still use Adobe Reader I don't know. The download is 34MB which should set alarm bells ringing before you even install it. 34MB for a friggin' PDF viewer?

In comparison Foxit is only 3MB, and they also provide an .msi file so you can easily roll it out to your windows domain. Consequently updating it is also easy, new .msi and away you go.

Foxit 

Posted Monday 10th November 2008 10:31 GMT

Flame

The problem with Foxit is that it doesn't support all of the PDF format. Any file that makes use of the interactivity features of PDF will fail on Foxit - it renders the PDFs as a flat file (just as GView does).

In other words, the reason that Foxit is smaller and faster than Adobe Reader is that it does a lot less. So, use Foxit if you like for simple PDF rendering, but you'll need Adobe Reader for advanced PDF files.

This is why 

Posted Monday 10th November 2008 23:02 GMT

I use KPDF - it's safe and light enough to let it open in a browser without worrying it'll freeze your computer.

@Daily 

Posted Tuesday 11th November 2008 08:57 GMT

Jobs Horns

So which bit of "Whether your machine runs Windows, OS X, or Linux" (emphasis on the OS X) didn't you understand?

Oh bother! 

Posted Friday 14th November 2008 23:24 GMT

Unhappy

Better read those 7 pages, then.

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