Adobe pushes out emergency patch for Reader apps

Adobe Systems has pushed out an emergency update that patches at least 17 holes in its Reader and Acrobat applications, including two serious bugs that are being used by online criminals to install malware on end-users' machines. The fixes address a vulnerability in Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of the reader that allows …

[RFC822]

Update requires a reboot - why?

Just installed the update on my 64-bit Windows 7 system. It's telling me that it requires a reboot.

Why on earth does an update to a document viewer require an operating system reboot??????

[Dan 55]

Because it's Adobe

With the 9.3.2 update, as soon as I launched the updater with the menu option in Reader, I had to close Reader and re-open it again when the update was over.

But even that doesn't work which this update, it says I don't have permission and I run as administrator... The option to fix the installation doesn't help. And if I download the standalone installer, I'm back at 9.3.0.

[Steve Davies 3]

The Acrobat fell in a heap again

Come on Adobe. Get your frigging act in order.

Flash, Full of holes

Acrobat Reader, Full of holes and bloated beyond all recognition.

Photoshop? Why is physical media CS5 more expensive thant Download?

This almost makes me want to cheer apple for refusing to let Flash on the iPhone & iPad. They might for once have a clue.

Adobe, Fail in epic proportions.

[Mark Aggleton]

Mmmmm

Though notionally I agree if you actually read the article you'd see it can be exploited in Foxit as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, who knew there's a version of Reader for OS X?

Oh, wait, it's only good up to 10.6.0. Guess I'll stick with Preview, which isn't susceptible to this vulnerability in the first place.

[John Tserkezis]

Am I missing something?

Reader for windows is up to v9.3.0, which is the same as what I had downloaded a little earlier.

Surely for a super duper urgent release like this they're going to up the version?

[Anonymous Coward]

17 down...

...17 factorial to go

[Robert Carnegie]

Apparently you have to let 9.3.0 phone home for the update then?

We who prefer to walk around with a complete installable binary file, we are at a disadvantage.

Incidentally, does the licence still say "Install on one PC", and are you therefore pozidrived if you own more than one PC?

[John Ridley]

too late

I've installed FoxIt on all my machines. I've found it to be about the best alternate. There are smaller ones that don't have quite the features I'd like, and ones with far more features than Adobe does, but FoxIt seems the best simple replacement.

It does what a PDF reader SHOULD do - allow you to READ PDFs. it's not a launchpad for every bit of malware out there (all the dangerous stuff is disabled by default, though the features are there if you feel the need to drop your pants).