Adobe alternate?

Hi,

I want to remove all Adobe products and replace them with alternative more secure solutions.

The only Adobe products in my pc are Adobe Flash Player 11 plugin and Adobe Reader X(10.1.3).

If I remove these now as far as I understand I will not be able to read pdf files and watch videos in my firefox browser.

Please suggest and recommend alternate solutions.

Best Wishes,
ams963

 

For pdf's use SumatraPDF, it is portable,small, can open comics, epub etc.... and it can work as firefox plugin for inbrower reading of pdf's.

Flash.....i hate flash....don't use so cant help here. Wait for html5 i guess

 

yes SumatraPDF is the best alternative, cant believe how small the total install size is

 

There is no alternative to Flash Player if you view Flash videos in the web. However, if you only view Flash videos in YouTube, you can try http://www.youtube.com/html5

 

+1 for SumatraPDF
+1 for waiting for HTML5
But you are using Sandboxie right? You don't have to worry about flash exploits. If the only website you used that needs flash is only Youtube then you'll be fine because many videos are supported by HTML5, for those without, I use a Firefox add-on that enables me to download them.

 

I suggest PDF X-Change from Tracker Products

 

+1 for Sumatra PDF!

 

Adobe Reader is very secure. Enable the sandbox.

I don't think there's been any sandbox breaking malware in the wild for Adobe.

edit: For further protection I'd recommend EMET, though the sandbox is very strong on its own.

 

Thank you all very much.

So I will try sumatra pdf reader and keep flash player.

I actually do not know which websites use flash if at all. I watch videos from youtube, dailymotion, etc. So I guess they use flash. I guess firefox supports html5 and no problem for those videos which need no flash.

 

Adobe has it's own sandbox? How to enable it? I cannot sandbox adobe using sbie for some unknown reason.

Good to know Adobe's sandbox has been strong.

I don't like EMET. And I remember EMET has fewer functionality for XP systems.

 

Aww? Now I'm really confused. Should I look for alternates or keep using Adobe without the fear of exploits?

 

Actually EMET is really important on XP systems as it brings ASLR to the system. I highly recommend you give it a second chance, ASLR will make a big difference.

Make sure your Reader is fully up to date.

edit: Can't find a link for instructions. It's somewhere in the settings.

I think Adobe Reader is the most secure PDF viewer.

 

What drove me away from using Adobe Reader is its 50 mb download size. Since I only need a reader, I used SumatraPDF .

 

Okay I'll it out.

 

exactly. and the start-up services and constant bandwidth stealing which is typical of adobe products.

 

I use Nitro PDF Reader as my Adobe Reader alternative.

http://www.nitroreader.com/features/

It is feature rich, and works amazingly well.

As for security and protection, it has...

Restrict internet access:

Some PDF files require internet connectivity to share or obtain information. With Nitro Reader, you can completely disable internet interactivity from your PDF files, or specify a list of trusted sites, allowing you to operate securely at a level that suits your workflows and matches your level of comfort.

Disable JavaScript:

Prevent unauthorized JavaScript-based activity and malicious attacks by simply disabling JavaScript completely, mitigating all risk originating from this functionality.

Security information was copied from official Nitro PDF Reader site.

 

For security purposes Adobe Reader is better than the others I have tried (Sumatra, PDF X-Change, Evince) given its built in sandbox, and also provides certain extra functionality that cannot be entirely replaced by alternatives, some online forms require Adobe for example. I haven't yet tried Nitro which looks interesting - thanks RADEON0101. There's also the option now of viewing PDFs with Google Docs which to some extent reduces the need for separate readers. It isn't an alternative though and it doesn't measure up performance-wise either, the Chrome PDF reader is also very poor, or at least was when I last used it. What I keep wondering is why some sort of reader isn't built into Windows, although Adobe would no doubt raise a fuss. With regards to both Flash and PDF security I notice that you are using Sandboxie; personally I have Flash Player and PDF X-Change installed in their own sandboxes but if you don't want to do that why not just force Flash and PDF executables/folders to open in Defaultbox?

 

No Problem

 

Chrome's PDF reader is apparently based on Foxxit. It also runs in a sandbox.

 

I can imagine that it is secure but at least when I used it its functionality was insufficient for using as a full replacement - sooner or later you'd need a separate PDF reader.

 

Yes, it's definitely not full featured at all.

 

EMET doesn't bring ASLR on XP, it only implements pseudo SEHOP for applications.

 

There's no such thing as pseudo SEHOP. You're thinking of pseudo ASLR.

 

I mean it pseudo implements it on XP.As for ASLR on XP, no, you are wrong as EMET doesn't implement any kind of ASLR on XP.

Please read the user manual.

 

Yes, it does. It implements pseudo-ASLR. I'm too lazy to Google for you. It's based on a very simple characteristic of Windows memory management where if you reserve address space before the program does Windows reallocates with something like 6bits of entropy.

It is not system-wide ASLR. It is not full ASLR.

Feel free to Google/ whatever and confirm.