Any software that's particularly popular is bound to attract the unwanted attention of hackers and virus writers. The Adobe developers working on Acrobat Reader probably know this all too well, having been faced with numerous PDF-based viruses over the past year.
The company has now announced the availability of Acrobat Reader X and it includes one big feature that should help to keep PCs a little safer - a sandbox. Protected Mode - as it's officially known - will be enabled by default and runs the parts of the program required to view a PDF in a tightly controlled and restricted environment. On the rare occasion that the program needs to operate outside of these confines - such as to write to a temporary folder - the requests will be closely monitored and required to adhere to a strict set of policies.
The theory is that by ring-fencing the PDF, the chance of malicious software being able to deploy its payload is greatly minimised. The developers admit that it isn't a "security silver bullet", but it should provide a layer of added protection. For the moment the sandbox only applies to write operations, though it will be expanded to include read-only operations in the future to help protect the integrity of sensitive information.
The announcement also acknowledged the help that the developers received from their counterparts at Microsoft and Google. Both Chrome and Office 2010 include similar features and individuals working on those products shared valuable expertise with the team at Adobe.
In addition to Protected Mode, the new version includes support for sticky notes and highlighting to help users share feedback.
Reader X is available for download now for Windows and OS X, although the sandbox is only supported under Windows, where it's obviously more important.
