October 8, 2007
Adobe now faces the challenges of providing the patch in solving the security problem in its most popular programs. The failure of reassuring its users’ interests first has put the users that used Windows XP platform under a big security threat. According to the security advisory posted by Adobe, Adobe has admitted that a critical vulnerability can be found in versions 8.1 and earlier of Adobe Reader and Acrobat. This security flaw was first came courtesy of a security expert, Petko Petkov in a blog entry last month. Petkov said, “Adobe Acrobat/Reader PDF documents can be used to compromise your Windows box. Completely!!! Invisibly and unwillingly!!! All it takes is to open a PDF document or stumble across a page which embeds one.” In his February blog post, he also mentioned, “PDF is very interesting file format. It allows the PDF consumer to do almost everything they can think of and this is the reason why I find it quite insecure.”
Meanwhile, Adobe categorized the bug as a critical issue and recommended its users to apply the suggested workaround as stated in the security advisory. However, Adobe’s workaround requires their Windows XP users a flair of editing the Windows registry.
