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markc66787151
Participant
June 15, 2017
Question

Define Protected View Options

  • June 15, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 1470 views

Hi Adobe

I have recently deployed Acrobat Reader DC to my company and we have Protected View set to All files by default however, the end user is able to modify that setting.  I have been exploring the possibility of controlling this setting by a registry key via Group Policy which is easy enough.  But I haven't been able to find anything that defines what "Files from protentially unsafe locations".

Are you able to provide me with what a potentiall unsafe location is please?

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

S
Adobe Employee
Steve Cordero
Adobe Employee
June 15, 2017

It's a very basic definition but it's defined in the Adobe Customization Wizard DC's Help documentation.

Security — Acrobat Customization Wizard DC for Windows

Protected Viewhttp://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/Wizard/WizardDC/security.html#protected-view

Protected View (PV) is a highly secure “super-sandbox” that is essentially a read-only mode. In Protected View, all features are disabled except those associated with viewing (e.g., zoom, navigation, links, find, etc.). Users must select Enable all features if they wish to do anything more than read the PDF. This action assigns trust and adds the document to the users’ list of Privileged Locations. PV behaves identically for Acrobat and Reader whether viewing PDFs in a browser or in a standalone product.

Note

In Reader 11.0, Protected View is only supported when Protected Mode is enabled. There can by no HKCU or HKLM Protected Mode registry preference set to 0 (off) when Protected View is enabled.

There are three configuration options:

  • Off: Disable Protected View.
  • Files from potentially unsafe locations: Open files from the internet or other unknown (and therefore untrusted) sources in Protected View.
  • All files: Open all files in Protected View.

Protected View configuration

_images/protectedview.png

D
DanNCSECU
Participant
September 20, 2018
  • Files from potentially unsafe locations: Open files from the internet or other unknown (and therefore untrusted) sources in Protected View.

this is a very simplistic answer, and doesn't seem to be answering the question.

Does this mean all files from the internet are viewed as unsafe?  if said file is downloaded to the downloads folder, is it still unsafe?  what if it's downloaded to documents?

If i download a pdf from the internet, and keep it in my documents, will i constantly have this file flagged?

how does adobe reader determine if the file is unsafe?  is it based on the location of the file (IE, what folder it's in), or based on a characteristic of the file in question, and if that's the case, how does it identify that characteristic.

S
Adobe Employee
Steve Cordero
Adobe Employee
September 20, 2018

Read the ETK's Sandbox Protections section for a little more detail.

    try67
    Community Expert
    try67Community Expert
    Community Expert
    June 15, 2017

    [Question moved to Enterprise Deployment (Acrobat and Reader) ]

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