Adobe Announces Security Breach

The security breach, which Adobe called a part of a “sophisticated attack,” also allowed hackers to obtain encrypted passwords and other personal information from customers.

Hackers also illegally took copies of the source code of some of the company’s widely used products, which are run on personal computers and businesses servers around the world.

There was no indication that the attackers obtained unencrypted credit card numbers, Adobe said in a statement. As a precaution, however, the company said it had notified customers and credit card companies about the breach and reset customer passwords to prevent further unauthorized access.

“Cyberattacks are one of the unfortunate realities of doing business today,” Adobe’s chief security officer, Brad Arkin, wrote in a blog post on Thursday. “Given the profile and widespread use of many of our products, Adobe has attracted increasing attention from cyberattackers.”

The breach at Adobe is one of a recent spate of hacking episodes at prominent organizations. Already this year, hackers have infiltrated database aggregators like Lexis-Nexis and Dun & Bradstreet and the security firm Kroll Background America, as well as the National White Collar Crime Center, which helps businesses protect their computer systems.

Concerns about the security of data at Adobe were first raised last week, when a technology researcher and an independent journalist investigating the hacking episodes discovered copies of Adobe source code on a server that was believed to have been used in the previous attacks. Brian Krebs, the journalist, informed Adobe about his findings, and on Thursday publicly reported the hacking on his site, krebsonsecurity.com.

One of the products that had its source code stolen is ColdFusion, which, according to Adobe, is used by the United States Senate, 75 of the Fortune 100 companies and more than 10,000 other companies worldwide.

Adobe security officials said they were not aware of any specific risks to customers. But because the source code contains the DNA of the software program, computer experts said it could allow hackers to find and exploit any other potential weaknesses in its security.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 4, 2013

An earlier version of this article misidentified a company that was hacked this year. It was the security firm Kroll Background America, not Kroll Associates.

Gadgetwise Blog: Adobe Sends Boxed Software to the Cloud

Adobe Systems this week announced that its popular Creative Suite, which bundles Photoshop, Illustrator and a number of its other products, will be available only by subscription through Adobe’s cloud service, Creative Cloud. No more boxes and disks.

Although Creative Suite was really designed for graphics professionals, this news affects hobbyists because the stand-alone $700 version of Photoshop will also be available by subscription only, but at a subscription price of $240 for a year.

There are a few advantages to using a cloud service, Adobe said. It simplifies sharing and collaborating on projects. If you have customized your settings on one computer, you can access them from any computer. It also means that updates and upgrades are easier for Adobe to carry out.

But calling it a cloud service is a tad misleading. When you subscribe to the service, the software is downloaded to your computer. You can work on images and illustrations even if you don’t have Internet access.

You need to connect occasionally to get updates and to make sure your account doesn’t expire, although an Adobe spokesman said he was unsure how often that connection would have to be made.

There are many price plans, based on the number of products you want to use, which products you have owned before, and how long you are willing to subscribe.

For instance, for the full Creative Cloud Service, which includes all the software in Creative Suite 6 plus 20 gigabytes of free storage and other improvements, it costs $75 a month for a month-to-month subscription. If you are willing to commit in advance for a full year, it’s $50 a month. If you owned Creative Suite 3, 4 or 5, a subscription is $30 a month for the first year if you commit to a year’s subscription. If you owned Creative Suite 6, it’s $20 a month for the first year if you commit to a year’s subscription.

There are similar discounts for single products. For instance, if you had Creative Suite 3 or later, you can get Photoshop alone for as little as $10 a month for the first year.

Adobe said it will continue to sell a boxed version of Creative Suite 6, but will no longer provide software updates for it. The price will remain $1,300 to $2,600, depending on the version.

Lightroom 4, a powerful photo editing program that is sufficient for most photographers, is still sold in a box for $150. Lightroom 5 will soon be released in a boxed version, but the price has not been announced.

Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Keeping Adobe Flash Player Secure

I frequently get notices that Flash Player needs an update — why does it need so many new versions? Can I skip some updates?

Adobe updates its Flash, Reader and Acrobat software for several reasons, including bug fixes, performance improvements and security issues. While the Flash Player is a common plug-in that Web browsers use to display video and animation, the program has become a popular target for hackers.

To fix vulnerabilities in the software when they are discovered, Adobe releases security updates for its programs as needed to keep computers protected. For the curious, Adobe’s site has a page that explains what each new security update addresses. Hackers have also disguised malicious software as updates to Adobe programs, so you may want to check Adobe’s site anyway to make sure the software-update notice you have received is legitimate.

Advertising: Adobe Marketing Campaign Works With Coarse Language

In this instance, the brand is Adobe, which in a campaign getting under way this week seeks to support efforts by marketers to prove to their bosses that spending on advertising is not a waste of money. The campaign portrays products like Adobe Analytics, Adobe Media Optimizer and Adobe Social as valuable tools for marketing executives who want to debunk myths like “Social media is worthless” and “Marketing is baloney.”

Except that Adobe Systems and its agency — Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, part of the Omnicom Group — do not say “baloney” in the ad. Rather, they use an abbreviation for a word that a family newspaper would describe as a barnyard epithet.

The full epithet, with an asterisk replacing a letter, appears on a document that Adobe is circulating internally to explain that the purpose of the campaign is to prove that marketing can no longer be dismissed with the epithet because “today’s campaigns are rooted in hard data and powerful insights.”And the epithet appears unexpurgated in Web video clips that are part of the campaign, visible briefly on a Dymo-style label affixed to a fanciful detector contraption in scenes set in (make-believe) focus group sessions.

Adobe Systems will spend an estimated $10 million to run the campaign in the United States for the next three months. The decision to use the provocative language is indicative of a trend for ads to speak more in the vernacular than in the formal phraseology that was standard for so many decades. The frank language and colloquial expressions follow the loosening of societal standards for discourse, reflecting how marketers seek to mirror changes in consumers.

For instance, Procter & Gamble, for decades a model of rectitude in its ads, is now often adopting the look and feel “of YouTube video” when producing television commercials, said Marc S. Pritchard, global marketing and brand building officer at Procter.

That is why in a recent commercial for Tide detergent, in which a couple talk about the value of Tide versus lower-priced alternatives, the actress playing the wife tells the actor playing the husband that he stinks at folding clothes — only she uses a far more direct verb.

“We’re a family company,” Mr. Pritchard said in a speech at the 2012 annual conference of the Association of National Advertisers, and “there was more than a little discussion about that line.”

But new efforts for Tide that include the franker commercial have helped the brand grow “more than two-and-a-half share points in the last three months alone,” Mr. Pritchard said, referring to market share.

For Adobe, said Ann Lewnes, chief marketing officer at Adobe Systems in San Jose, Calif., the language represents “a bold and provocative way to get attention.”

“I think Adobe is not known for being provocative or bold,” Ms. Lewnes said. “We’re ‘a nice software company.’ ”

“But in this crowded space, with a lot of competition, the intent is to break through, jolt the market,” she added.

Asked if the strategy was risky, Ms. Lewnes replied: “I don’t think so at all. I think good advertising is always somewhat polarizing.”

The campaign is based on the premise that “marketers feel angry about being misunderstood,” she said, and the language in the campaign is meant to reflect that.

The campaign includes, in addition to the Web video, advertisements in newspapers and magazines, and online; sponsored content on mashable.com and theonion.com; sharing the metrics of the campaign, in real time, on adobe.com; and social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. On Twitter, Adobe will use the hashtag “#MetricsNotMyths” to underline the campaign’s theme.

The barnyard epithet is appropriate for the campaign because “for a long time, people did not know if the work was working, so you had to use a little” baloney in discussing the effectiveness of the advertising with other executives in the C-suite, said Keith Anderson, associate partner and executive design director at Goodby, Silverstein.

“It made you feel less confident,” Mr. Anderson said. “But now, you can know, you don’t have to guess, you can have hard facts to back you up.”

The frankness of the campaign also signals that the agency and Adobe Systems realize “if we were flowery, overly clever, jargony, the more it would feel like we were doing the same thing we were saying people don’t need to do anymore,” he added.

“We did look at other ways of making that statement” than to use the epithet, Mr. Anderson said, but it was decided to proceed because “the goal is to be provocative and reset the conversation.”

The language also conveys that Adobe is “plain-spoken,” he added, “and talks the way people talk.”

The products being advertised in the campaign compose what Adobe Systems is calling the Adobe Marketing Cloud, which competes against products sold by many companies; among them, Ms. Lewnes listed Google, I.B.M., Kenshoo and Salesforce.

The campaign is supplementing a more mainstream effort for Adobe, Ms. Lewnes said, which is also created by Goodby, Silverstein and carries the theme “Adobe &.” To indicate the connection, the campaign carries the theme “Adobe & marketing.”

Adobe Cuts Forecast as Users Migrate Online

The company’s forecast, which disappointed Wall Street, came as Adobe reported revenue for its third fiscal quarter that was below analysts’ expectations.

Adobe projected that its earnings in its fourth fiscal quarter would range from 53 cents to 58 cents a share, excluding onetime items, on revenue of $1.075 billion to $1.125 billion.

That forecast was below analysts’ average estimate of earnings of 67 cents a share in the current quarter on revenue of $1.2 billion, according to the equity research firm StarMine, which gives more weight to estimates from analysts with better track records.

These targeted ranges factor in 25,000 additional new Creative Cloud subscriptions in the quarter, the company said Wednesday.

Adobe introduced its Creative Suite 6, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash and Dreamweaver, and the Web-based Creative Cloud products in its second fiscal quarter in an effort to provide a more stable revenue model.

Analysts have expressed concern that the Web-based Creative Cloud subscription service would hurt Adobe’s financial growth at least over the short term.

Josh Olson, an analyst at Edward Jones, said Adobe’s fourth-quarter earnings and revenue targets indicated that the company’s transition to a more stable revenue model was happening faster than anticipated.

“What happens with the subscription model is that revenue is recognized over time, so if adoption is faster there is more of a delay,” he said. “The long-term take-away is that it’s good thing.”

Adobe reported net income for its third fiscal quarter of $201.4 million, or 40 cents a share, compared with $195.1 million, or 39 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding onetime items, the company said it earned 58 cents a share in the most recent quarter.

Adobe’s revenue totaled $1.08 billion in the third quarter, compared with $1.01 billion in the 2011 quarter. Wall Street expected revenue of $1.10 billion. Adobe said its revenue was pulled down by about $9 million because of currency fluctuations.