Critical flaw hits Adobe Reader and Acrobat

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Adobe has released a security advisory warning of a serious flaw in its Reader and Acrobat products, enabling hackers to infiltrate machines.

The issue, rated as critical by the company, affects versions up to and including 9.3.4 of both products on Windows, Macs and UNIX systems.

“This vulnerability could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system,” Adobe warned in a blog posting. “There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild.”

Although it has confirmed the flaw, the firm has yet to release fix or even a date customers can expect one.

Instead the security bulletin just said: “Adobe is in the process of evaluating the schedule for an update to resolve this vulnerability.”

The company only released patches for Reader, Acrobat and Flash three weeks ago to fix critical flaws.

It recently received a lot of stick from Apple’s Steve Jobs, who claimed Flash was the main reason Macs crashed. As a result Jobs has refused to include Flash support on his company’s flagship products such as the iPhone and iPad.

However, other firms have made their support clear, with Google’s Android mobile operating system providing support for the multimedia platform.

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