Time to Update Your Adobe Reader.
Adobe Systemss is urging users who run the company’s Adobe Reader software on Microsoft Windows computers to update to a new version of the popular PDF document viewer, after the company was alerted to several flaws that criminals could exploit to break into computers running the software.
From the Adobe advisory: “Critical vulnerabilities have been identified in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 7.0 through 7.0.8 that could — although Adobe is not aware of any specific code exploits at this time — allow an attacker who successfully exploits these vulnerabilities to take control of the affected system. A malicious file must be loaded by the end user for an attacker to exploit these vulnerabilities. This issue is remotely exploitable. It is recommended that users update to Adobe Reader 8 or apply the workaround provided below.”
I had Adobe Reader version 7 installed before applying the Adobe Reader 8 update, available for download from this link here. The “check for updates” feature in Reader 7 (select “Help” and the “Check for Updates”) said I had the latest version of Reader — when, of course I did not. So I downloaded the standalone installer, which cheerily replaced the previous version and installed the new one without issue (although it wasn’t speedy, and this was on my super-fast machine).
Adobe says that users who for one reason or another can’t upgrade to Reader 8 should replace a specific file in the program’s directory. Instructions for how to do that are in the Adobe advisory’s “Solution” section.
Most people reading this blog probably have some version of Adobe Reader on their machines that isn’t version 8. Take a moment to check which version you are running (Click “Help,” then “About Adobe Reader” if you’re not sure) and update.
