Adobe Reader and Acrobat get another layer of security
Adobe announced new security features this week for its Reader and Acrobat XI products, including enhanced sandboxing, Force ASLR, PDF whitelisting, and Elliptic Curve Cryptography. In addition to a number of new features enhancing Reader's and Acrobat's PDF-creation capabilities, these security measures add another layer atop previous changes that have improved a once "widely exploited" app over the past two years.
Most importantly, Reader XI will have a "protected mode" that will extend the sandbox users gained in Reader X to limit read-only activities. This should protect against various types of data-theft when combined with the "write protection" already present in Adobe's software. Reader XI will also get a protected view-function, while Acrobat XI's protected-view function will be extended, so that both apps create a separate desktop to prevent screen-scraping attacks.
