Adobe May Change To Monthly Patch Cycle

Trailrunner7 writes "Adobe, which has been under fire for the security of its flagship products, Flash and Reader, for some time now, may be on the verge of changing its patching process to push fixes out on a monthly schedule, which would coincide with Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday releases. The change would be the second major adjustment to Adobe's patching process in the last year or so. In 2009 the company moved to a scheduled quarterly patch release process in an effort to give its customers a better chance to plan for testing and deployment. That change was generally well-received. Now Adobe may change the schedule again in order to get patches out more quickly. The company is considering releasing its security fixes for Reader on a monthly schedule, the same day that Microsoft releases its patches."

Comments

STUPID ACROREAD ICON

[Silly Man]

But will they stop placing that stupid icon on our desktop during every single update?!

Re:STUPID ACROREAD ICON

[Skuld-Chan]

No - because your essentially reinstalling the product. You can use customization wizard (free download on their site) to build a modified install so you never see that icon again ;).

Re:STUPID ACROREAD ICON

[denis-The-menace]

look at what others do to avoid that pitfall.
http://www.appdeploy.com/packages/detail.asp?id=1328

Great!

[leonardofelin]

Now I won't know whose patch messed up my computer after the update...

Re:Great!

[NevarMore]

Thats the idea, its called "the blame game" and it cuts down on support costs.

Will we still have to REBOOT?

[AriesGeek]

Seriously, Adobe, why do I have to reboot after updating your damn user-land software? I can even install some OS patches without rebooting!

Re:Will we still have to REBOOT?

[PalmKiller]

You don't, just tell it not to reboot, and the new version will work fine until you decide to do the reboot

stop using adobe

[__aavqan3009]

stop using adobe.

Avoid acrobat reader at all costs

[Idiomatick]

You know you suck when your company is playing catchup with Microsoft on security and patching.

Re:Avoid acrobat reader at all costs

[PsychoSlashDot]

You know you suck when your company is playing catchup with Microsoft on security and patching.

Seriously. I don't like to swear much on Slashdot, but I'd like to tell Adobe "fuck you!"

This isn't about an operating system. It isn't even about a productivity suite like Office. It's a reader. Stop patching every damned month and secure the bastard. Right now. One patch and you're done. I do not condone any corporate plan to regularly trickle out tiny fixes here and there when they're discovered because that's Good Enough. It's not good enough.

Adobe needs to change their product plan.

Adobe Reader - views PDFs and that's it
Adobe Reader Pro - views PDFs, has all the scripting and form-filling features that are vulnerable and buggy
Adobe Acrobat - makes PDFs

Strip Reader down to as few features as possible. We know that 99% of what Reader is used for is flat basic text reading. So either make a product that does that and only that, or at least make a MODE where turning on all the other features for X minutes requires a UAC-style prompt.

Full installer

[Nimey]

How about releasing a full installer of the latest revision, instead of this idiocy where we have to download 9.3.0 from their website and then manually tell it to install 9.3.2? It can't be /that/ hard.

Enough with third party update

[JaCKeL 1.0]

I am an IT and these update are PAIN IN THE ASS. Personally, I am tired of updating every single piece of software I use individually BUT it is very bad for my customers. 1. Most of them include crap like Norton scan, toolbars and other badware. 2. The majority of my customers require older version for their manufacturer system to work (old java, old acrobat reader, IE7 or less, ...) so when they do update (because they are harassed to do it) their software stop working. After that they are afraid to update anything and they become a security risk. 3. The frequency of theses updates are so high it just get people mad. 4. Why do we need to reboot for a software update, we're in 2010. Can't Microsoft put their foot down and ask anybody who want to do update to work with them ?

Re:Enough with third party update

[Pharmboy]

Can't Microsoft put their foot down and ask anybody who want to do update to work with them ?

Oh yea, MS should put their foot down and tell them "if you want your 3rd party program to be installed on customer's computers, you have to go through us. No more 3rd party applications installed unless it is through us or at least done our way". No, that wouldn't perk up the DOJ. And I'm sure that everyone on /. and every other blog would say "yes, that sounds like a good idea".

Once they did that, the thread on /. would have 1000 comments in less than an hour bashing "Teh Micr0$ucks!"

Re:Enough with third party update

[gad_zuki!]

Well, Adobe could release plugins for the new version of WSUS and admins can simply approve them like they do MS patches in WSUS. Or at least change their updaters so they make some sense. I just installed Acrobat 8.0. The updated proceeded to install:

8.0.1
8.0.2
8.0.3
8.1.0
8.1.1
etc
Almost each asking for a reboot.

Instead it should have downloaded the update straight to 8.2 or whatever the current version is and then done the incremental to 8.2.3.

Lastly, they need to disable javascript by default in reader. Users can just press the "run scripting" button if they trust the publisher. Adobe is pretty much where MS was in 1998 or so. It really needs to grow up and smarten up regarding security.

Re:Enough with third party update

[h4rr4r]

Go download virtualbox, put your images into that and test the apps. If you do not have system images, go get fog and make some. This will all make your life much easier.

Going to take a little more than that

[haplo21112]

Adobe patches are crap in general.
1. They usually take the form of nearly complete product updates, patches 80% of the size of the installed product are common.
2. They currently only rarely issue roll-ups so you end up in the you have to have 9.3.1 base, then install 9.3.2 patch , then install 9.3.3 patch can't jump from 9.3.1 directly to 9.3.3

This sort of stuff drives the guy at my company in change of Adobe software deployments insane. For a new machine install it takes forever as each individual patch is installed by the software deployment system.

Awesome!

[drfreak]

Adobe exceeds expectations again with upping the frequency of the updater we all know and love.