Posts Tagged ‘adobe acrobat reader’

SumatraPDF Adobe Acrobat Reader free software ( Secure ) Alternative

Friday, July 19th, 2013

Whether you're forced to use MS Windows but still want to use as much as possible Free Software – i.e. Stay away from Non-Free Adobe Acrobat Reader. There is Sumatra PDF – a good alternative that reads well most of PDFs. For rendering PDF Sumatra PDF usees muPDF library. SumatraPDF is minimalistic software it does exactly what it is meant for – reads PDF. Unfortunately from version 0.6 of Sumatra there is DRM implemented (Digital Right Managements) so it is not possible to copy from DRM-ed documents.
Sumatra opens  following formats: Open XML Paper Specification, DjVu, EPUB, XPS, CHM, CBZ and CBR, and MOBI files.
As of  time of writting official Sumatra PDF version is at ver. 2.3.2

sumatra pdfafter install thank you screenshot

I've made mirror of Sumatra PDF 2.3.2 installer here , Sumatra PDF zipped is here

Sumatra pdf reader screenshot ms windows 7
Sumatra PDF works on Windows XP, Vista, Win 7 & 7

  One of key advantages of Sumatra PDF over Adobe Acrobat Reader is you don't need to update it all the time and it is much less likely that Sumatra PDF is hit by security flaw in PDF format. 

For people who use Linux / BSD or some other Unix and want to stay free from proprietary Adobe Acrobat Reader two nice alternatives are default's GNOME PDF reader Evince and KDE's Okular

How to: Open Office view / edit .doc , .odt document in Full Screen mode

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

Most programs, like Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Evince etc. etc. have as a default set F11 to bring the program to full screen.  It seems logical that the Linux substitute for Microsoft Office – Open Office should also go full screen while the user press F11, but weirdly it doesn't.

Pressing F11 in Open Office on my current Debian Squeeze (6.0.5) Stable Linux with OpenOffice.org 3 brings to screen Styles and Formatting customization dialog.

openoffice.org 3 debian linux F11 key press Styles and Formatting dialog screenshot

I'm not sure why openoffice is behaving like this, but one of my guess is cause OpenOffice was multiple times upgraded whenever I upgraded my Debian to latest stable with apt-get update && apt-get upgrade thus most likely still some keyboard bindings from older OO versions are affecting it. There are two ways to make OpenOffice display in Full-Screen.

1. Using OO menus

Use View -> Full Screen (F11)

As I said it is possible, the F11 key assignment is still reacting to old config assignment as in dialog for full screen the Shortcut key said to bring OO full-screen is F11.

2. Making OpenOffice FullScreen through keyboard

Keyboard config to bring OpenOffice to Full-Screen mode is a simultaneous key-press of:

CTRL + SHIFT + J

Pressing Ctrl + Shift + J again brings OO to its standard window.

Openoffice / Libreoffice run in full screen screenshot pic Debian squeeze Linux

Though I'm not sure I assume in newer OpenOffice versions now distributed under the LibreOffice name (cause of some Patents and Licensing issues), CTRL + SHIFT + J should bring up LibreOffice in Full-Screen too. I don't have at hand installed version of LibreOffice, so if someone can confirm for sure of Ctrl + Shift + J makes LibreOffice go FullScreen? Please drop comment.

Cheers 😉
 

New critical Adobe Flash Player security flaw allows a malicious attacker to get access to Windows, Linux, Mac OS and BSD

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

Flash swf Player artistic logo exploit

A new zero-day exploit for the Adobe Flash Player has been published on http://exploit-db.com .
The exploit published is targetting Windows 7 systems.
Even though the published version of the exploit is said to affect Windows 7 installations, the shellcode with this proof of concept exploit (PoC) could surely be changed to a one that would also take effect in Linux.
Most likely Linux exploitation will be a harder task to achieve, however thesecurity advisory issued http://www.adobe.com/support/security/advisories/apsa11-02.html recommends an immediate update of the flash player.

According to some rumors the 0 day adobe flash vulnerability has been exploited since a long time to get access to confidential U.S. governmental documents.

A classical ways said that malicious hackers uses is by sending a flash (.swf) containing email, by simply opening the email attachment the victim gets exploited.

Adobe officially has reported, there are no official information if attacks has targetted other company software like Adobe Acrobat Reader which supports embedded flashes.
According to Adobe Adobe Reader is not vulnerable to this kind of attacks as it uses a protected mode which would mitigate the attack (though I hardly doubt this claim).

The affected versions of Adobe’s Flash player are:

  • Flash Player 10.2.153.1 for Windows
  • Flash Player 10.2.153.1 for Apple Macintosh
  • Flash Player 10.2.153.1 for Linux and Solaris
  • Flash Player 10.2.156.12 for Android Mobile platform

as well as the Authplay.dll library used by Adobe’s Acrobat Reader

Earlier versions of Flash player are also affected by the critical security vulnerability.
There are already rumors that the exploit is exploited using a crafted (.swf) files embedded into Microsoft Word .doc files.

This new critical vulnerability is another example clearly showing how insecure a user who has flash enabled in their browser is.

According to preliminary information, exploitation of this critical security flaw can be sucessfully achived in most (if not all) browsers …

By so far browsing on Linux was always considered to be a way more secure than on Windows, with this issue rising up this kind of believe is questioned.
Surely many Linux distributions and FreeBSD and BSD derivatives used as Desktops will probably not package timely newer version of the adobe flash (flashplugin-nonfree) package on time

Today the flash player is a de-facto standard and is wide spread among most modern internet connected operating system obviously it’s unificated use, creates unified problems.

The example with this flash security issue is a good example against why non-free technologies should not be set as standards.
If the flash player and standard was free and everybody could create and distribute flash players for free. Such a vulnerability affecting so many operating systems and so many browsers would never come true

To sum it up, this issue will surely create a lot of problems and opens a serious security hole for us the Linux users.

Therefore be sure to update your flash player before someone has exploited you through the web.