Acrobat 8 Professional (Ver. 8.1.0) - Risks of Having it Installed?

I've kept a copy of Acrobat 8 Professional (Ver. 8.1.0) available to have access to the forms creation feature which I occasionally use. My needs do not justify purchasing upgrades that include the feature, e.g., Acrobat XI Pro which lists at $20/month in the clouds.

I recognize that this is unpatched legacy software. I'm concerned that I may be using it carelessly. At one point the 'free Acrobat Reader' wouldn't scroll with my wheel mouse, so I started using Acrobat 8 Professional to download pdf files from the web. Is this clearly a careless practice? Does just having Acrobat 8 Professional available as a program on my system put it at risk, or does the risk only occur if I open a pdf file with the program?

Perhaps I should be using a SeaMonkey Add-on like FoxIt? I'm certainly not excited about 'cloud computing.' I tried registering some Adobe software not long ago and encountered a protracted 'server outage' during which subscription customers also had no access to the software they had contracted access to.

Thanks,

baumgrenze

 

I think opening PDFs with an old version of Acrobat is a great risk. I'd suggest Sumatra PDF. I started using it when I saw Avira's lead programmer recommending it.

http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/download-free-pdf-viewer.html

 

I don't think the risk of keeping it is terrible. You can keep v8 for editing PDFs and install the latest Adobe Reader XI and make it the default for opening them. Then you are only risking the v8 issues if you are editing. Install EMET and apply it to both and you should be relatively safe.

 

No Click Required to Exploit 0-day Adobe Reader Vulnerability

 

The date on that article is March 6, 2009. I doubt it applies anymore.

 

"Core support" for 8.x ended in November 2011 according to http://www.adobe.com/support/products/enterprise/eol/eol_matrix.html#86.