Adobe (finally) adds security sandbox to Reader
Locking down widely exploited app
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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 and the modification of sensitive files. The new feature, dubbed Protected Mode, is intended to lessen the damage malicious hackers can wreak when they exploit buffer overflows and similar flaws that inevitably arise in any piece of complex software.
“While sandboxing is not a security silver bullet, it provides a strong additional level of defense against attacks,” Brad Arkin, Adobe's senior director of product security and privacy, wrote here. “Even if exploitable security vulnerabilities are found by an attacker, Adobe Reader Protected Mode will help prevent the attacker from writing files or installing malware on potential victims’ computers.”
Adding the technology to an existing piece of software is a monumental task, developers have said. To make Protected Mode as effective as possible, Arkin said Adobe engineers worked with counterparts at Google and Microsoft, which have fortified the Chrome Browser and Office and Internet Explorer respectively with a similar feature. Mozilla Firefox has yet to add sandboxing, and has provided no timetable for doing so.
Reader's automatic updating feature has yet to alert us to the availability of new version, which is called Reader X, and it's not clear when that might happen. Those who want to download it immediately may do so here. While Protected Mode is available only for Windows, Reader X is also available for Mac OS X and Android. ®
COMMENTS
Monumental? Complex?
"Adding the technology to an existing piece of software is a monumental task,"
No doubt, but deleting 95% of the source tree and leaving a proper, simple, secure PDF viewer could be done in a day by the tea-lady.
Sumo Software.
So.... even more bloat??? No thanks I'll stick with Foxit! Smaller and seems less prone to the issues that plague Adobe - Like Microsoft - they need to accept that this tired old pile of code needs a ground up re-write to remove the bloat and improve security
$5 says root exploit in the wild within a week
This *is* Adobe Reader we're talking about, after all.
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