Adobe Reader's security woes a boon for up-and-coming rival Foxit

From InfoWorld: Foxit Reader, a free PDF-reading knockoff of Adobe Systems' free Adobe Reader, has won what its maker estimates is 70 million users worldwide because of its speed and light weight.

The latest version of Foxit Reader 3.0 for Windows is a svelte 3MB download, compared with Adobe Reader 9.1 for Windows, which tips the scales at 25MB.

And Foxit now has something else going for it: better security.

For the past year and a half, Adobe Reader has been plagued with numerous nasty bugs, including zero-day vulnerabilities that, if unleashed by an unwitting enterprise employee, could have devastating consequences.

Facing criticism, Adobe is aiming to release security patches more quickly.

But it's not fast enough for many companies, says one anonymous security researcher at the Black Hat conference, who told CNET this week: "As a result of the number of zero-day attacks on PDFs this year, large banks hate Adobe."

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