Adobe Reader Under Threat

Apr 27, 2009

Marcel Hilzinger

Speaking at the RSA security conference in San Francisco 2009, chief security officer of F-Secure, Mikko Hypponen, advised against the use of Adobe's Acrobat and recommended users switch to an open source PDF reader.

According to an article by CNET, Hypponen claimed that almost 50% of this years attacks have been aimed at Adobe's Acrobat with six vulnerabilities detected in the reader. Compared to the first quarter of 2008, the number of proprietary PDF files used in attacks this year has risen from 128 to 2,300, said Hypponen.

Refusing to advocate one particular reader, Hypponen later brought journalists attention to pdfreaders.org, a website that offers free alternative PDF readers for download.

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