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Critical bug in the Foxit PDF Reader

Critical bug in the Foxit PDF Reader

Michael Horowitz

Michael Horowitz wrote his first computer program in 1973 and has been a computer nerd ever since. He spent more than 20 years working in an IBM mainframe (MVS) environment. He has worked in the research and development group of a large Wall Street financial company, and has been a technical writer for a mainframe software company.

He teaches a large range of self-developed classes, the underlying theme being Defensive Computing. Michael is an independent computer consultant, working with small businesses and the self-employed. He can be heard weekly on The Personal Computer Show on WBAI.

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Michael Horowitz

Today, May 20th, Secunia released an advisory about what they consider a "highly critical" bug in the Foxit PDF Reader. There is, as yet, no fix for the bug. Ryan Naraine has a bit more on this over at ZDNet.

The latest version (2.3) of the free Foxit PDF reader was released on April 25, 2008. I blogged about it on May 6th pointing out that there is a portable version of the program. That is, it can be carried around as a single EXE file on a USB flash drive and run on any Windows computer without having to be installed first. I ended my blog posting with this warning:

... new features ... scare me - new code is more likely to be buggy than older, established code. Still, I will use and recommend version 2.3 because of the bug fixes it contains, but be sure to check for updates (Help -> Check for Updates Now... ) relatively often.

Computer users are sometimes faced with a choice between software with the latest features vs. software that is tried and true. Defensive computing means opting for software with the best chance of being bug-free. See When it comes to software, the latest is not the greatest.

Update. May 22, 2008 11AM ET: Still, no update to the Foxit PDF Reader. To be continued...

Update. May 23, 2008 1PM ET: A new version of the Foxit PDF Reader was released today.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.