F-Secure says stop using Adobe Acrobat Reader [CNET News]
The chief research officer for F-Secure, a web security firm, made a recommendation yesterday to all Internet users that they temporarily abandon the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader due to the number of targeted exploits that have been launched against the most popular PDF reader. According to F-Secure, over 47 percent of security exploits launched against a particular piece of software targeted Acrobat Reader so far this year.
While F-Secure's advice may be an outlier among web security experts, it does point to the trend of malware programmers and hackers continually searching for new targets of opportunity. Adobe has recently patched one Acrobat vulnerability, and likely has many more to patch to keep exploitable opportunities at bay. One problem that Adobe faces, according to this article, is that most users don't expect to have vulnerabilities in Acrobat, thus neglecting installing necessary software updates.
Until Adobe resolves the Acrobat vulnerabilities, F-Secure has recommended that users download and install an alternative PDF viewer, a list of which is available in this article.
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