Adobe to switch on silent PDF updates for Reader, Acrobat
Adobe will flip the switch next week on a service that silently updates customers' copies of its popular Reader and Acrobat PDF programs, the company's chief security executive said today.
Background updating in Adobe Reader Updater and the Adobe Acrobat Reader will be enabled on Tuesday, April 13, when Adobe delivers its next regularly-scheduled set of patches for the two programs, said Brad Arkin, the company's director for product security and privacy. "Starting Tuesday, we will turn on the server, and the new updater will take effect," said Arkin.
The move is meant to keep more users' software fully-patched, and thus more secure. Adobe has struggled to keep up with a swarm of vulnerabilities in PDF documents, which according to one analysis, were responsible for 80% of all exploits at the end of 2009.
