With all the Internet attacks that exploit Adobe Acrobat Reader people should switch to using an alternative PDF reader, a security expert said at the RSA security conference on Tuesday.Of the targeted attacks so far this year, more than 47 percent of them exploit holes in Acrobat Reader while six vulnerabilities have been discovered that target the program, Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of security firm F-Secure, said in a briefing with journalists.
Greg Laden's Blog
Evolution, Life Sciences, Science Education, Human Evolution, and Stuff
Learn more about Charles Darwin and his work.
Looking for stuff about birds?
Lean more about lions
An archaeological expedition to the Congo
The Skeptical Search Engine
The contents of Greg Laden's Blog are copyrighted by Greg Laden.
Recent Comments
- Greg Laden on What is Markdown and why use it?
- No one on New Theory of Dinosaur Extinction
- Satish Goda on Fun with the Linux seq command
- Donald Iljazi on What is Markdown and why use it?
- Greg Laden on The grey squirrel from a birder's point of view
- Charles on The grey squirrel from a birder's point of view
- Greg Laden on The grey squirrel from a birder's point of view
- Greg Laden on Seismic Activity at Yellowstone
- Connie Davis on Who has a higher IQ, cats or dogs?
- lynda on Seismic Activity at Yellowstone
Search
Profile
Click on "About" for the big picture, and "Archives" for the details.
Recent Posts
- Charles Darwin, Geologist
- Looking for stuff about birds?
- Environmentally Friendly Hard Drive Case
- Charles Darwin February 12, 1809 - April 19, 1882
- Whitney Houston has died
- Lions!
- Changing the rep of Fungi one mushroom-based robot thingie-builder at a time
- More Mississippi Meanderings
- Is climate change a leftist scientific conspiracy to destroy America?
- Oldest Animals Discovered in Namibia
Blogroll
If you don't see yourself on my blogroll, just drop me a line and let me know. I'll add you.*- 10,000 Birds
- Alpha Meme
- a Nadder!
- Angry by Choice
- Armchair Dissident
- (((Billy))) The Atheist
- blogfish
- blogSci
- Blond Nonbeliever
- Blue Lion Blog
- Bug Girl's Blog
- Camels with Hammers
- Catalogue of Oganisms
- Cassandra's Tears
- Class M Planet
- Cocktail Party Physics
- Counter Minds
- Cranky Linguist, The
- Crowded Head, Cozy Bed
- Dead Racist Society
- Deep Sea News
- Dispersal of Darwin
- Divine Afflatus
- Dread Tomato Addiction
- Evil is Underrated
- Evolved and Rational
- Evolving in Kansas
- Evolving Thoughts
- Fellman Studio Blog
- Flying Trilobite
- Further Thoughts
- Hoxful Monsters
- ICBS Everywhere
- Illusory Tenant
- It's Alive!!
- Jafcisa
- Letters from a Broad
- Life Before Death
- Looking For Detachment
- Matharu's Rants and Raves
- Mors dei
- Natural Reckonings
- Nature Blog Network
- Providentia
- Qeyḥ bāḥrī
- Quiche Moraine
- Religion, Sets, and Politics
- Sandwalk
- Sarah Zielinski
- Science Notes
- The Seething Primate
- Skepchick
- Spanish Inquisitor
- Splendid Elles
- Survival Machine
- Synapostasy
- TalkOrigins
- Tangled Up in Blue Guy
- Tetrapod Zoology
- The Flying Trilobite
- The Inoculated Mind
- The Intersection
- The Loom (new)
- The Scientific Activist
- The Unexamined Life..
- The Zone
- Thinking for Free
- Think Progress
- Three Toed Sloth
- Toomanytribbles
- Traumatized by Truth
- Truth Is a Woman
- udreamofjanie
- Uncommon Liberty
- View from the Pond
- Vickie Henderson Art
- When Pigs Fly Returns
- Writer's Daily Grind
Archives
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
« Carbon Dioxide Totally Harmless???? | Main | Save the planet. Eat a chicken. Or a head of lettuce. »
Recommendation: Stop using Adobe Acrobat Reader
Category: Technology
Posted on: April 23, 2009 3:22 PM, by Greg Laden
Find more posts in: 
Technology
TechnologyTrackBacks
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/107785
Comments
I installed Ghostscript (8.64) a while ago because I wanted to import some PDF documents into GIMP, but I didn't think to make it my default PDF reader. I'll have to give that a try.
Posted by: The Science Pundit | April 23, 2009 4:07 PM
For Mac users, the alternative is built right into the OS. You can open any pdf document in the built in "Preview" app, and you can save any document as a pdf via a checkbox in the standard Print dialog box.
Posted by: chezjake | April 23, 2009 4:28 PM
Skim is also a good choice for the mac.
Posted by: dean | April 23, 2009 4:33 PM
I am glad there are alternatives. I detest anything and everything from Adobe. None of their stuff works correctly and it is all full of bugs and holes and runs slow and crashed and hangs.....
Posted by: NewEnglandBob | April 23, 2009 5:29 PM
It isn't open source, but I've been using Foxit Reader for quite some time, and it works quite well - and considerably faster than Adobe.
Posted by: Dave Gill | April 23, 2009 6:18 PM
Well, the SuSE 11.1 distro I recently installed seems to have configured "evince" as the default reader for Firefox. It's a gnome thing and so far seems to work pretty well.
Posted by: liquidthinker | April 24, 2009 1:04 AM
Plus, Acrobat Reader (on Windows, anyway) is about the rudest, shonkiest app going. Constantly trying to update itself (and frequently throwing unhandled exceptions in the process, which is a real pain if you've got a debugger installed and you're trying to do something else) and insists on a reboot whenever it's updated, or even when you uninstall it. It's just rubbish.
Posted by: Dunc | April 24, 2009 4:48 AM
In a perfect world, OpenOffice would let you read PDFs...
Posted by: DuWayne | April 24, 2009 8:48 AM
hate acrobat with a passion, always have
I have to create PDF's on a daily basis for text documents and very large, dynamic maps. My favorite free (windows) programs are PDF-Xchange for viewing/editing and PDFill for adding headers/footers/page numbers. Foxit is perfect if you only need to view.
Posted by: jake | April 24, 2009 9:08 AM
DuWayne: An editable PDF import would be somewhat difficult because of the fundmental nature of PDF. Having the ability to edit (as in the Adobe software) in OO would be a huge investment of code better done as a stand alone but integrated program or a major add in that you can call up if you want.
Reading a PDF seems like a good idea, but in some ways, it's the same as reading a spread sheet. IOW, if you are in OO Writer and "open" a spreadsheet, it opens in Calc. OO could have a thusly integrated PDF reader.
Anyway, there has been a discussion of this for a while, and at one time there were plans to develop it, but they seem to have fizzled.
There is a PDF import extension project:
http://www.oooninja.com/2008/06/pdf-import-hybrid-odf-pdfs-extension-30.html
and
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/pdfimport
but I doubt this is what you are looking for.
BTW, among the various PDF readers in Linux, some are way nicer than Adobe Reader will ever be. Also, there are numerous command line utilities to convert to and from PDF and variou formats, to break a PDF document into distinct pages, combine pages, etc. etc.
Posted by: Greg Laden | April 24, 2009 9:17 AM
I use Foxit reader. It's small, fast, and really safe. And it's free to boot.
Highly recommended to all.
Posted by: highschoolphysics | April 24, 2009 11:12 AM
Another vote for Foxit.
Posted by: Connie | April 24, 2009 2:37 PM