Adobe details Reader and Acrobat updates

Adobe has announced it will finally release updates for its Reader and Acrobat products set to fix critical issues which are already being exploited in the wild.

One of the issues set to be addressed was a flaw first disclosed by Adobe early on this month alongside a problem with Flash Player, which was subsequently fixed.

The issue relates to the authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x for Windows, Macintosh and Unix and could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.

"Note that the 29 June 2010 updates represent an accelerated release of the next quarterly security update originally scheduled for 13 July 2010," noted an Adobe security blog post

"With this accelerated schedule, Adobe will not release additional updates for Adobe Reader and Acrobat on 13 July 2010."

Although Adobe is right to accelerate its update schedule for this flaw, given that it is being actively exploited in the wild, the firm will be angry that its products are receiving yet more bad publicity, given the long-running dispute with Apple over the security and stability issues of Flash.