Acrobat, Reader security patch close at hand

Stephen Withers
Monday, 15 November 2010 11:50

Business IT - Security

An out-of-cycle security update for Adobe Acrobat and Reader has been announced for this week in order to address critical security issues.

Adobe's efforts to move to a quarterly update cycle have been thwarted by the need for additional updates to address critical issues. For example, out-of-cycle updates for Acrobat and Reader were released during August.

And now a vulnerability disclosed in October has led Adobe to announce that a critical, out-of-cycle update for Acrobat and Reader will be released on Tuesday November 16 (US time). That vulnerability is being actively exploited, according to company officials. The update will address multiple security issues.

The issue also affects Flash Player, but an update for that piece of software was released on November 4.

This week's updates will cover Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.4 and earlier 9.x versions for Windows and Macintosh. A corresponding update of Reader for Unix is planned for November 30.

Since the beginning of October, Adobe has pushed out an early release of the quarterly update for Acrobat and Reader, critical security updates for Shockwave Player, Flash Media Server and Flash Player, and important security updates for RoboHelp and InDesign.

The next quarterly update for Acrobat and Reader is planned for February 8, 2011.