Facing criticism, Adobe rethinks PDF security

May 20, 2009, 07:50 PM —  Computerworld — 

Blasted three months ago for being slow to fix a zero-day vulnerability in its popular PDF viewer, Adobe today promised it will root out bugs in older code, speed up the patching process and release regular security updates for Adobe Reader and Acrobat.

The flak Adobe caught in February, when it disclosed a critical vulnerability, admitted the bug was being used by hackers, but then took weeks to patch the problem, is what prompted Adobe to review its security practices, acknowledged Brad Arkin, Adobe's director for product security and privacy.

"At first, this was just another of our normal security incidents," said Arkin. "But it ended up expanding to [make] changes in our security practices with Reader and Acrobat."

The project, which kicked off in February, has three parts, said Arkin, starting with a look at the legacy code in Reader and Acrobat that he characterized as "at-risk areas."

Currently, Adobe develops new code under what it calls its Secure Product Lifecycle (SPCL), an approach similar to Microsoft's much-better-known Software Development Lifecycle (SDL), which involves several security-specific steps that programmers go through to make their software less liable to harbor bugs. From now on, said Arkin, Adobe will apply the SPCL methodology to some older sections of Reader and Acrobat, too.

"We're going to broadly look at the whole application, but focus on at-risk areas, where we'll do threat modeling, static code analysis and look for potential vulnerabilities," said Arkin, who refused to call that change a full-blown "code review," like the one Microsoft spent millions on to root out bugs in Windows XP.

"We're going to do a lot more pro-active work," he promised. "We want to shake loose vulnerabilities."

Adobe will also speed up its patching and communicate with users more frequently, Arkin said. The company was slapped by some in February for taking three weeks to fix the already-exploited bug, and then only for Reader and Acrobat 9; Adobe staggered the patch delivery for the other versions over several more weeks. A patch for a different zero-day vulnerability that Adobe issued this month was the first step toward that faster pace, said Arkin. "The fact that we were able to patch on May 12, and patch all [editions of] Reader and Acrobat on the same day, that's encouraging," he said.

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Close

On Twitter now

adobe

Powered by Twitter
You are logged in | Sign out
Sign in and post to Twitter

What are you thinking?

Cancel Tweet sent

On Twitter now

Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
peer-to-peer

Brian Proffitt
Microsoft/Novell: Breaking Down the Coupon Numbers

Esther Schindler
Drupal's Dries Buytaert on Building the Next Drupal

Tom Henderson
Top Ten General Operating Systems Rants

pasmith
PS3 motion controller delayed; goes up against Project Natal

sjvn
Neolithic Windows security hole alive and well in Windows 7

claird
Perl source code comparison makes for good reading

mikelgan
Cell phones don't create stress or interrupt much

Sandra Henry-Stocker
How to: The Unix Interview

 

Where Google Chrome security fails: the password
I heard mention that the Chrome OS will have some sort of encryption available a la bitlocker. If it's possible to encrypt personal data using another password or key, then it may have potential for very secure data.... And Ubuntu has an 'encrypt home directory' option, perhaps google should follow suit.
- Dann

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Marketplace