Adobe Acrobat Reader Flaws Could Let Attacks Hijack Your Mac

Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2020/05/15/adobe-acrobat-reader-flaws-could-let-attacks-hijack-your-mac/

If you use Adobe Acrobat Reader, you should update immediately to protect your Mac from some nasty security vulnerabilities accessible to local attacks.

Reminds me of Adobe Flash!

I bought PDF Expert last week… and I already had Acrobat Reader DC installed couple years ago but once I saw this article, I am like, ugh again just like Adobe Flash… and Deleted all trace of Adobe from this iMac using App Cleaner. Currently I have Preview, PDF Expert, Simple Comic and Skim in my Application folder that can open PDF. I use PDF Expert by Readdle to do more than read and use iCloud instead of Adobe Document Cloud which they wants me to register when I already have iCloud Drive.

TidBITS staff: Thank you so much for this article/alert.

I have been struggling for some time now with Adobe Reader, and basically have been hating it (not realizing until now, that there is a much better alternative, i.e., Apple Preview). The notification of this vulnerability pushed me over the edge, and I have switched from Reader, to Preview. Much happier now !! (I have expunged Reader from both my Macs.)

Glad to hear it. There are a few situations where Acrobat Reader is simply necessary—we just saw a PDF-based tax form from a reader in Hawaii that required Acrobat because no other PDF software was capable of completing the form. But for most uses and most (Mac) users, Preview is a better experience.

For this reason, I always recommend installing Adobe Reader, but do not configure it as the default reader for documents. So double-clicking a PDF opens Preview, but I can always right-click it and select Adobe Reader if it is necessary to properly view/complete the document.

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Same here. And I very rarely actually end up having to use Acrobat.