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F-Secure Suggests Ditching Adobe Reader For Free PDF Viewers

Posted by timothy on from the jane-the-sex-was-good-but-I've-had-enough-circus dept.

hweimer writes "Yesterday at RSA security conference, F-Secure's chief research officer recommended dropping Adobe Reader for viewing PDF files because of the huge amount of targeted attacks against it. Instead, he pointed to PDFreaders.org, a website maintaining a list of free and open source PDF viewers."

11 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. Already there by andytrevino · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've been using Foxit Reader for some time on my aging laptop because of performance issues with Adobe Reader 9, and it works great. http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/

    1. Re:Already there by zonky · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes, it's so feature compatible with adobe, they've added similar exploits! http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-1104

    2. Re:Already there by DanWS6 · · Score: 5, Informative

      I was a firm believer in foxit, until I had to fill out my 1040 and related forms. Some of the fields were just screwed up. I had to cave and install acrobat. I died a little inside that day.

  2. Not Much Cross-Platform by Kelson · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's interesting that of the 8 alternatives mentioned, only Okular is listed as being available across the board on Windows, Mac OS X, and (as they put it), "Free Operating Systems." (Linux, BSD, etc.) Even so, it involves installing KDE on top of Windows or Mac OS X, but at least it can be done.

    The only two-platform reader, Yap, appears to be based on GNUStep, and I don't actually see a Windows download on the web page.

    1. Re:Not Much Cross-Platform by Kelson · · Score: 4, Informative

      Doesn't Apple have their own non-adobe pdf reader built into OS X?

      Yes, Preview can read PDFs (among many other formats) well enough that I didn't even install Adobe Reader when I bought a new MacBook a few months ago. Admittedly I'm not sure how well it handles forms, but it has no problems with static PDF files.

      Of course, I doubt it's open source/free software, so it wouldn't be on this list anyway.

    2. Re:Not Much Cross-Platform by pete-classic · · Score: 4, Informative

      Forms support is decent, but not perfect. I reported a couple of bugs I ran into filling out my tax forms this year. Specifically, I couldn't save a PDF in Adobe Reader that had form data already saved in it with Preview. And the digits didn't align correctly in the bank routing and account number fields.

      I use it frequently. My only other gripe is that the search is brain-dead. (It "ors" all the search terms. which is never what I want. Putting an "AND" between them doesn't help :-/)

      It might sound like I don't like it, but these are actually my only complaints. Very solid app.

      It's also worth noting that PDF export is built right into the print subsystem. No goofy third party print drivers. No need for individual apps to understand PDF.

      -Peter

  3. For those on the go by compro01 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sumatra PDF is also available in a portable format.

    --
    upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
  4. Foxit is unsuitable by GF678 · · Score: 4, Informative

    This isn't FUD, this is based on my own experiences:

    I've found that the latest Foxit Reader is unable to show certain PDFs, in particular those created using the latest version of Adobe Acrobat. I created some PDFs in Acrobat 9 and when loaded into Foxit Reader 3.0, showed up entirely blank. The only way to view them was to put Adobe Reader on instead. So I did.

    I'm not sure why Foxit showed these PDFs entirely blank. Maybe Acrobat 9 has a new version of the PDF standard that's incompatable, I don't know. What I do know is it means that if I want to gurantee the viewing of PDF files, I pretty much require Adobe products, which isn't that bad if you're using Reader 9 (much faster than version 8).

    Possibly a vendor lock-in mechanism, but I'm tired of fighting. It's easier just to go with Adobe and get on with work.

    1. Re:Foxit is unsuitable by GF678 · · Score: 4, Informative

      One more thing I forgot to mention - I switched from Acrobat to PDFCreator a while back. It's very good, and anything I render using PDFCreator works just fine with Foxit Reader. Also has the side benefit of being open source and an example of an actually GOOD open source product. Unfortunately this doesn't discount the fact that other people might use Acrobat to render THEIR PDFs, and I don't want to cut myself off from being able to view them.

  5. Tracker Software by eric2hill · · Score: 4, Informative

    The free PDF Viewer from Tracker Software is a wonderfully fast PDF reader, and comes with annotation capability right out of the box. They are very developer friendly, and their PDF XChange printer drivers produce PDF's that are tighter and better optimized than Adobe themselves. Great company to work with, and a great free PDF viewer.

    --
    LOAD "SIG",8,1
    LOADING...
    READY.
    RUN
  6. Re:How about a security review? by mrbene · · Score: 4, Informative
    I think F-Secure's unofficial stance is outlined best in their blog from a while back:

    we're not recommending Foxit. We're not recommending Sumatra. Or PDF-Xchange, CoolPDF or eXPert PDF. Instead, we recommend users to find their own Adobe Reader replacement. This way we get more heterogeneous userbase, which is a good idea security-wise.