adobe acrobat

Adobe patched 23 security vulnerabilities in its Reader PDF viewer on Tuesday, most of them critical, including one that has been exploited by hackers for at least a month or possibly much longer.

After warning users earlier this week of a potential security risk in their popular Acrobat PDF software, Adobe is now cautioning users against installing a third-party patch that claims to address the issue. The vulnerability, detailed on Adobe's site, affects all versions of Adobe Acrobat and Reader for various OSes, including Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and Android.

Just hours before Adobe plans to deliver the latest patches for its popular PDF viewer, a security firm said malicious Reader documents made up 80% of all exploits at the end of 2009.

Adobe issued its first regularly-scheduled security updates on Tuesday, fixing at least 13 critical flaws reported by outside researchers and secretly patching an unspecified number of bugs found by its own team.

Blasted three months ago for being slow to fix a zero-day vulnerability in its popular PDF viewer, Adobe today promised it will root out bugs in older code, speed up the patching process and release regular security updates for Adobe Reader and Acrobat.

Adobe Systems Inc. revealed Tuesday that it patched five critical vulnerabilities behind the scenes when it updated its Reader and Acrobat applications earlier this month to fix a bug already under attack.