Most secure PDF viewer?

April 1, 2009 6:58 PM

In light of the increasing number of PDF security exploits, what is the most secure PDF viewer for Windows?

I would prefer a minimal viewer that will handle encrypted PDFs but doesn't have a javascript engine built in, nor any of the other multimedia junk that exists in Adobe products. I'm aware of Foxit and some of the open source offshoots from Ghostview. I know you can turn off Javascript execution via registry hacks but would prefer to minimize the attack space by not having features that are rarely used.

posted by benzenedream to computers & internet (5 answers total)

If youre not running as local admin, theyre all secure. All these exploits want to target system resources that non-admins dont have permission to.

If you cant do that much, you can do a runas and run acrobat and your browser as a limited user. Or use something like drop my rights.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:25 PM on April 1, 2009

use something like FoxIt Reader, its free, faster than Adobe, and gives you at the very least a bit of security through obscurity
posted by Mach5 at 7:28 PM on April 1, 2009

Just here to second foxit. It's speedy, lightweight, and more useful than Adobe's offering. And it's like Mach5 said, the thing is pretty obscure in terms of # of users, so it's doubtful that it will be specifically targeted by virus makers.
posted by pandemic at 8:51 PM on April 1, 2009

Currently trying SumatraPDF out. It looks even more lightweight than Foxit and is primarily designed to be run from USB drives.
posted by benzenedream at 11:52 PM on April 1, 2009

Despite a funky cut and paste mechanism (Ctrl-Left mouse click and drag to highlight text box), Sumatra is the winner. Really lightweight, and doesn't have all the pending security holes (scripting languages, etc.) that Adobe has.
posted by benzenedream at 12:48 PM on April 2, 2009