Items tagged with PDF
Adobe is setting its sights on paper documents with its new Document Cloud. The service is meant to be an online hub for storing and sharing forms and other documents that are ordinarily filled out and signed by hand in many workplaces. Not surprisingly, the core of Document Cloud’s capabilities comes from Acrobat, known in this version as Acrobat DC. “People and businesses are stuck in document-based processes that are slow, wasteful, and fragmented,” said Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of Technology and Corporate Development at Adobe in a statement. “While most forms of content have successfully made the move to digital (books, movies, music), documents and the process of working with...
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Sony and E Ink have collaborated on a brilliant digital paper 13.3-inch notepad tablet that’s designed as an A4 size equivalent. The flexible-display device uses E Ink Mobius technology, and Sony’s part appears to be primarily on the mass production side. DigInfo.Tv shot a demo video of the tablet in action, and the device is impressive. Unlike the tablets we usually see, which boast colorful graphics and glass displays and are designed for multimedia, this one is perfect for note-taking at universities, law firms, and the like. The responsiveness to pen input looks decent, although ideally it would be a little faster still, but the lightweight (358g) and thin (6.8mm) device features...
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Adobe is getting the word out that a flaw related to its Acrobat and Reader software can cause some data leakage from PDFs. The company’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) noted the issue on its blog and promised to solve the problem with the next security update to Adobe Reader and Acrobat, which is slated for May 14th. Adobe's headquarters in San Jose, Calif. Image credit: Adobe Adobe views the data leakage issue to be a “low severity” problem, as the only information that ends up being exposed is the users IP address and timestamp. The problem only occurs when a “specially crafted PDF” is opened, according to Adobe. Security firm McAfee Labs, which...
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It seems that no matter what steps Apple takes to prevent people from jailbreaking their devices, within no time at all enthusiasts have bypassed those steps. A few days ago Apple released the iOS 4.3.4 update to stop hacking and jailbreaking, specifically an exploit in the way PDF files handle fonts. This exploit could potentially allow a malicious PDF file to sneak malware onto users' devices, or more likely, could allow users to easily jailbreak their devices with websites like JailBreakMe. Within a mere 12 hours of the update's release, users eager to escape Apple's restrictions had already gotten around the patch. Alas, the jailbreaking method does not yet work for the iPad 2 (for which...
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Astak launched a new 5-inch Pocket PRO eBook reader that should provide Amazon’s Kindle with some good competition. This new reader supports over 20 open file formats and also features Adobe firmware that adds support for Digital Rights Management PDF files. Thanks to the Adobe firmware, users can read both public-domain titles as well as copy-protected PDF documents on the Pocket PRO. At the end of July, Astak announced they had acquired permission from Adobe Systems to install the Adobe Digital Editions firmware on their 5-inch and 6-inch devices. To date, Astak is only the second company to have obtained this firmware besides Sony. This firmware lets users purchase and read copyright-protected...
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Let’s face it: PDF files aren’t exactly the fastest loading documents on the planet. Now, thanks to a new feature in Gmail, opening a PDF attachment doesn’t have to try your patience. Instead of opening your native PDF viewer (like Adobe Acrobat), you’ll get the fast-loading document reader built into Google Docs. Not only is this reader fast, but it also has search capabilities to help you find anything you want within the PDF document. There are a number of other benefits to this reader as well. First, the viewer displays thumbnails of the pages in the document. You can use these thumbnails to jump around the document very quickly. There’s also a built-in zoom, which scales the document’s text...
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Recently we reported that Steve Jobs had no use for Flash in the iPhone. Microsoft thinks, well, differently. Even though Microsoft is developing a rich-media alternative to Flash they call Silverlight, Adobe and Microsoft understand that for the time being, they'll both do better by licensing Adobe's Flash "Lite" for MS Windows Mobile. “People want vibrant experiences and access to entertainment and information anywhere, anytime,’ said John O’Rourke, general manager, Mobile Communications Business at Microsoft Corp. “Bringing Flash Lite and Reader LE to Microsoft Mobile experience will give consumers more of their favorite websites on the go.”We know the plans, but we don’t have timing yet neither...
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That particularly virulent .pdf trojan nicknamed the "Gozi Trojan" is back again in a new and slightly more sophisticated form. It uses a flaw in the Adobe Acrobat v.8.x. reader to steal your info as you're entering it into forms. You know that little padlock you see when you're communicating with an SSL encrypted page? It's just a pretty picture if you've downloaded the malware from a phony .pdf. This latest attack provides a good example of several successful tactics in the malware business coming together for a single attack. It uses a recent and widely publicized vulnerability (in Acrobat) to deliver a known-to-be-effective Trojan (Gozi) which is distributed to PCs through yet another bot...
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Petko Petlov, a "Security Researcher," has described a flaw in Adobe's common PDF format, and it's a doozy. Unlike the annoying PDF spam that we've all become used to and is beginning to subside, this flaw appears to allow a downloaded PDF to allow others to completely take over your Windows -based computer. He considers the flaw so dangerous that he has not released the proof of concept. "Adobe Acrobat/Reader PDF documents can be used to compromise your Windows box," he wrote Thursday on his blog. "Completely!!! Invisibly and unwillingly!!! All it takes is to open a PDF document or stumble across a page which embeds one." He described the issue as a high-risk...
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