Prepress

Adobe Acrobat 9 Security is Worse Than Ever, ElcomSoft Proves

Thursday 27. November 2008 - ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. announces the availability of an updated version of Advanced PDF Password Recovery 5.0, a product to unlock password-protected PDF files created by Adobe Acrobat and compatible products.

The new version supports the new Adobe Acrobat 9 format, offering a hundred times increase in password recovery speed for the new format thanks to a security weakness discovered by the company in Adobe Acrobat 9.

ElcomSoft, the company that discovered a security weakness in Adobe’s eBook software back in 2001, has found vulnerability in another Adobe Product. While Adobe advertises Acrobat 9 as the most secure PDF production tool ever with enhanced 256-bit encryption, ElcomSoft has discovered that the new PDF protection system implemented in Acrobat 9 is even faster to recover than in previous versions. In fact, a hundred times faster. “The new version of Adobe Acrobat is easier to break,” claims ElcomSoft CEO Vladimir Katalov, quoting a speed increase of two orders of magnitude for the new format. “Passwords of 8 symbols or less are no longer secure,” he adds. According to ElcomSoft’s CEO, using 256-bit AES encryption per se is not enough to achieve ultimate security without employing complex approach and consideration of the entire security system.