Adobe Reader Is the Most Exploited App

Adobe Reader Is the Most Exploited App

It seems that IT service Adobe Reader is the most often targeted by hackers, according to new data gathered by IT company F-Secure. When talking about IT security when using IT connectivity, Microsoft Word is no longer the world's most exploited app. In 2008 , Microsoft Word was exploited 35 percent of the cases and Adobe 29 percent. In 2009, Acrobat Reader got 49 percent of the hits and Microsoft Word 39 percent.

F-Secure says that "Why has it changed? Primarily because there have been more vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat/Reader than in the Microsoft Office applications." So, this is the most important reason of the attacks. Adobe hasn't managed to get up to date and got a very bad reputation. Attackers target even vulnerabilities that were patched three weeks ago and if a user has an unpatched version of Reader, when clicking on the file, a backdoor gets installed and makes its system connect to a server.