Upgrade Adobe Reader due to vulnerability - How to download it without the download manager!

Adobe have been urging users to upgrade their Adobe Reader to version 8.0 since previous version have a nasty vulnerability. Investigations have shown that the flaw will allow melicious attackers to run hostile code on the users machines if the user uses Microsoft Internet Explorer and visits a malicious website. See Adobe's security bulletin. Quoting from the Adobe site “Adobe categorizes this as a critical issue and recommends affected users uninstall any affected software.”

However, when you go to download the latest Adobe Reader (version 8.0) it appears that Adobe will first download a small file which in fact is a download manager which once run with administrator privileges will download the Adobe Reader. This can be problematic if you computer is not online and you are using someone else's machine to download the software to say a USB stick.

However, fear not there is a very simple method to download the actual Adobe Reader version 8.0 file without the download manager. Very simply turn of “Active Scripting” if you use Microsoft Internet Explorer or turn off JavaScript if you use Mozilla Firefox or Opera. Then visit www.adobe.com and click the get Adobe Reader icon and follow the download steps as normal. The only problem is that the download will not start automatically and you have to click the link labelled “If it does not start, click here to download.”.

To turn off Active Scripting in Microsoft Internet Explorer go to Tools --> Internet Options --> Security Tab --> Custom Setting --> scroll down to the “Active Scripting” section and hit Disable and apply. Don't forget to close and restart the browser.
In Firefox it is under Tools --> Options --> Content and untick the JavaScript and click OK. There should be no need to restart Firefox.

At the end of the download (which for Windows XP machines is about 20MB), don't forget to reset your browser back to the way it was.

As an aside, from a security point of view it is better not to have Java or JavaScript (or ActiveScripting in MS IE and ActiveX) enabled all the time. The downside on not having it enabled is some websites will not render or work properly. For those sites it you can re-enable it – visit the site and disable it again.

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