Adobe Gets Delayed Reader Update Out The Door

Adobe released a new version of Reader and Acrobat, patching eight security vulnerabilities in the PDF reader. The patches were delayed a weeks because of issues during regression testing.

Adobe has straightened out issues it spotted during regression testing that caused a Reader and Acrobat update to be postponed last week.

New versions of the PDF reader were made available today for Windows and Macintosh computers and they include patches for a number of critical vulnerabilities.

Affected versions are:

  • Adobe Reader XI (11.0.08) and earlier 11.x versions for Windows
  • Adobe Reader XI (11.0.07) and earlier 11.x versions for Macintosh
  • Adobe Reader X (10.1.11) and earlier 10.x versions for Windows
  • Adobe Reader X (10.1.10) and earlier 10.x versions for Macintosh
  • Adobe Acrobat XI (11.0.08) and earlier 11.x versions for Windows
  • Adobe Acrobat XI (11.0.07) and earlier 11.x versions for Macintosh
  • Adobe Acrobat X (10.1.11) and earlier 10.x versions for Windows
  • Adobe Acrobat X (10.1.10) and earlier 10.x versions for Macintosh

A laundry list of eight vulnerabilities were patched including a two memory corruption bugs and a cross-site scripting vulnerability affecting the Macintosh platform only. Other related memory vulnerabilities include a use-after free flaw that leads to code execution, a denial-of-service vulnerability related to memory corruption, a heap overflow, and a sandbox bypass vulnerability that can be exploited to escalate an attacker’s privileges on Windows.

The Reader and Acrobat updates were originally scheduled to be released last Tuesday as Adobe continues to coordinate its patch releases with Microsoft’s. However, only a Flash Player update was sent out the door.

The Flash Player update patched a dozen vulnerabilities, most of them of the highest severity and could have led to remote code execution.

The bugs enabling remote code execution exploit for the most part were memory corruption issues, including a memory leakage issue that could allow an attacker to bypass address space layout randomization (ASLR).

Another six CVEs address other memory corruption vulnerabilities, including as a use-after-free vulnerability, security-bypass vulnerability, a heap buffer overflow and another bug that allows a hacker to bypass the same origin policy.

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