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Buffer Overflow Critical Vulnerabilities In Adobe Reader And Acrobat

A critical vulnerability has been identified in Adobe Reader 9.1 and Acrobat 9.1 and earlier versions (Adobe Acrobat Standard, Pro, and Pro Extended 9.1 and earlier versions). The vulnerability would cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. A second vulnerability has also been reported that appears to affect Adobe Reader for Unix only.

Adobe is planning to release product updates to Adobe Reader and Acrobat to resolve the relevant security issues. Adobe expects to make available Windows updates for Adobe Reader versions 9.X, 8.X, and 7.X and Acrobat versions 9.X, 8.X, and 7.X, Macintosh updates for Adobe Reader versions 9.X and 8.X and Acrobat versions 9.X and 8.X, as well as Adobe Reader for Unix versions 9.X and 8.X, by May 12th, 2009. The Adobe Reader for Unix updates will resolve both security issues. A security bulletin will be published at http://www.adobe.com/support/security as soon as product updates are available.

Adobe categorizes this as a critical issue and recommends that users disable JavaScript in Adobe Reader and Acrobat prior to the availability of Adobe product updates and exercise caution when opening files from untrusted sources.

In the meantime, to mitigate the issue disable JavaScript in Adobe Reader and Acrobat using the following instructions below:

1. Launch Acrobat or Adobe Reader.
2. Select Edit>Preferences
3. Select the JavaScript Category
4. Uncheck the ‘Enable Acrobat JavaScript’ option
5. Click OK

Adobe is currently not aware of any reports of exploits in the wild for these issues.

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