Adobe Security Utility Concern

F
Posted By
Fausto
May 10, 2008
Views
363
Replies
18
Status
Closed
I was listening to a security MP3 on this site <http://www.grc.com/sn/SN-134.htm>

What was interesting to hear was what this security expert stated about the acrotray.exe utility that’s installed with CS3

Here’s his comment;
Steve Gibson, and Leo Laporte, Episode 134 for March 6, 2008:

Steve: I did have one little bit of errata that I wanted to share. We got a report from one of our listeners, Brian Dent, who reported that he was really glad that TrueCrypt made him produce an emergency rescue CD.

Leo: Oh, yeah.

It turns out that another Adobe utility – I don’t know what it is with Adobe and track 0. But it turns out that he’s learned that their acrotray.exe utility, which is some sort of something that lives down in the tray of Windows, is also writing into track 0 and wiped out TrueCrypt. He rebooted, and he typed in his password. Nothing happened. And he said he saw his life pass before his eyes. Then he realized, wait a minute, I’ve got that CD. So he booted from the CD. It was able to, of course, restore that track and the boot track, and he was able to get back into Windows. And again, by juggling back and forth a little bit, he figured out what it was that was causing the problem. And so this is two different things now from Adobe relative to, I guess to Macromedia. Or I think Macromedia was the other one. And so it’s something DRMish that Adobe is doing is really causing problems. And he did do some browsing around and confirmed that lots of other people are having the same problem with Adobe’s software and its collision with the TrueCrypt bootloader.

How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop

Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.

DM
dave_milbut
May 11, 2008
I hate that freakin little piece of crud. when i want to open the app, i’ll open it! i don’t need your stoopid util running full time to speed things up. if you can’t write a program that takes less than 5 minutes to start get out of the business. half the time reader’s browser plugin locks up anyway and i have to end acoread32 (or whatever’s) task, save the pdf to disk and open it from there. bloody monopoly. what’s that 3rd party reader util again?

<rant off />
P
Phosphor
May 11, 2008
As a Maccer I don’t have the problem being addressed here, of course. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel your pain, however.

But it galls me that Adobe hasn’t seen fit to create a PDF/Acrobat Reader plugin for Firefox. Granted, I have a perfectly serviceable plugin made by a third party (Mac-only) <http://www.schubert-it.com/pluginpdf/>, but it’s getting a little long in the tooth, and isn’t as full-featured as it could be. Plus, for folks running Intel-architecture Macs, and Firefox, they’re screwed, unless they force Firefox to run in Rosetta/PowerPC emulation mode.

But then again, the ShubertIT PDF plugin has a much smaller footprint, and doesn’t take nearly as long to load as Adobe’s PDF browser plugin, so there is that.

😐
BL
Bob Levine
May 11, 2008
But it galls me that Adobe hasn’t seen fit to create a PDF/Acrobat Reader plugin for Firefox.

I open PDFs in Firefox all the time.

Bob
RK
Rob_Keijzer
May 11, 2008
Adobe hasn’t seen fit to create a PDF/Acrobat Reader plugin for Firefox

Well I use it all the time too! (in Firefox on Windows)

<http://www.pdfdownload.org/>

Rob
JJ
John Joslin
May 11, 2008
Adobe hasn’t seen fit to create a PDF/Acrobat Reader plugin for Firefox

I wondered what that meant.
I
ID._Awe
May 11, 2008
Me too! I open pdfs in FireFox all the time without a problem.

Now personally I think that Dave & Phos’ negative attitude are the problem. If they turned that frown 🙁 upside down 🙂 everything will work wonderfully!
P
Phosphor
May 11, 2008
Looks like PDFdownload is more of a controller for whichever PDF viewer you use in Firefox, allowing more options for controlling what your PDF browser plugin/reader can do with the files. According to the website, you use it to control whichever PDF plugin you already use. By itself, it’s not a PDF reader.

Wonder if it works with the ShubertIT plugin?

But still, Adobe hasn’t made one that works with the Gecko browser engine, which is what Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape[R.I.P.] is built upon.

This is all as far as I’ve been able to determine anyway; I’m not too concerned about delving into the issue much further…the ShubertIT plugin works great, but could use some updating.
B
Buko
May 11, 2008
I have no problems reading PDFs in Safari, I don’t know how well Safari works in Windows.
DM
dave_milbut
May 11, 2008
for a simple reader app, adobe reader is way bloated and intrusive. period.
JJ
John Joslin
May 11, 2008
I stuck to Version 7 – it’s not as bad.
I
ID._Awe
May 11, 2008
If you download AR without Photo Album and the Google bar then it is no problem, but then again, I use Acrobat Pro, so that is not a problem.
RK
Rob_Keijzer
May 11, 2008
By default Adobe reader loads half of itself into memory at boot. just to make it launch faster.

I always disable that sort of things.

Rob
I
ID._Awe
May 11, 2008
Yeah, you have to delete the ‘Startup Launcher’ from the startup folder.
DM
dave_milbut
May 11, 2008
If you download AR without Photo Album and the Google bar then it is no problem

no. that’s what i have. it’s still a piece of bloatware.

Yeah, you have to delete the ‘Startup Launcher’ from the startup folder.

yes. i said that in my rant. and i’ll say again. if you have to preload a simple reader app to get it to SEEM like it loads in a reasonable amount of time, you’ve got problems as a programmer.

B – L – O – A – T.
JJ
John Joslin
May 12, 2008
Go back to 7!

<http://www.oldapps.com/>

It’s under "Office and Editing".
DM
dave_milbut
May 12, 2008
Go back to 7!

I believe there were some unresolved security issues w/7, i’ll have to double check though… anyway, 7 wasn’t MUCH better.
JJ
John Joslin
May 12, 2008
Don’t know about security.

It’s much smaller and faster, and doesn’t hook you up to external programs.
P
Phosphor
May 12, 2008
I RARELY open Adobe’s Acrobat Reader, just because it’s bloated.

I’ve found a FOSS PDF reader/annotator called Skim <http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/>. It loads quickly and serves well.

I’ll have to assume that there are similar apps for Windows…maybe they do some different things—lacking this feature but adding another—but the idea is the same. Slimmer, faster, does just what I need with read-only PDFs, and nothing I don’t need.

MacBook Pro 16” Mockups 🔥

– in 4 materials (clay versions included)

– 12 scenes

– 48 MacBook Pro 16″ mockups

– 6000 x 4500 px

Related Discussion Topics

Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections