Adobe toiling on patch for zero-day flaw in Reader and Acrobat

Adobe has confirmed that it is working to patch the zero-day exploit found in its Reader and Acrobat software.

Earlier, security researches had warned of an exploit in the programs which could lead to hackers taking control of affected systems. Adobe reported that a fix for the issue should come sometime during the week of 18 February.

Adobe says that it is working on a patch for the programs on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms, correcting flaws in Acrobat and Reader software versions nine to 9.5.3.

Until the issue is corrected Adobe recommended that administrators enable Protect View within the program's registry. Protect View is a feature that prevents documents from performing any actions that could put users at risk.

"Enterprise administrators can protect Windows users across their organisation by enabling Protected View in the registry and propagating that setting via GPO or any other method," Adobe said in a statement on the exploit.

The workaround will only work with Windows systems. Protect View currently isn't available on Mac and Linux versions of the software.

To be put at risk of attack users would have to open a PDF carrying the malware using the programs in question. Once opened the hack may not cause any noticeable suspicious activity.

According to Sophos head of technology in Asia Pacific, Paul Ducklin, the exploit works by using a decoy document technique to spread malware.

"The exploit doesn't just take over Reader and use it to inject malware onto your PC, but also reloads Reader with a clean PDF that looks safe and behaves innocently, largely because it is innocent," wrote Ducklin in a blog post.

For Adobe, the news comes following the release of a patch which corrected a similar issue in the Flash platform. Earlier this month, Flash suffered at the hands of a similar zero-day exploit.