Adobe Flash, Reader, Acrobat Vulnerable

Adobe on Thursday issued two security bulletins to address vulnerabilities in its Flash Player software and in its LiveCycle and ColdFusion software.

It also issued a security advisory about vulnerabilities in its Reader and Acrobat software that will be addressed in a patch next week.

The Flash Player vulnerability is designated "critical" and affects version 10.0.42.34 and earlier. Flash Player 10.0.45.2 resolves the issue and is available for download.

The vulnerability affecting LiveCycle 9.0, 8.2.1 and 8.0.1, and ColdFusion 9.0, 8.0.1, 8.0 and 7.0.2, resides in the BlazeDS 3.2 component, or earlier, and has been rated "important." Adobe has posted fix details on its Web site.

Adobe's advisory warns of "critical" flaws in Reader 9.3 for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX, Acrobat 9.3 for Windows and Macintosh, and Reader 8.2 and Acrobat 8.2 for Windows and Macintosh.

"This vulnerability (CVE-2010-0186) could subvert the domain sandbox and make unauthorized cross-domain requests," Adobe's advisory says.

Adobe plans to make a fix available on February 16.

The vulnerabilities come at an awkward time for Adobe. This is the third month in a row that the company has issued critical security advisories for its Reader and Acrobat software. Its Flash technology was recently panned by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who reportedly said that when Macs crash, Flash is usually the cause.

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch posted a lengthy defense of his company's technology and, following a flurry of critical comments from readers, continued that defense in an additional comment post.

"I can tell you that we don't ship Flash with any known crash bugs, and if there was such a widespread problem historically Flash could not have achieved its wide use today," he wrote. "...Addressing crash issues is a top priority in the engineering team, and currently there are open reports we are researching in Flash Player 10. From the comments across the Web there may either be an upswing in incidents or there is a general piling on happening -- we are looking into this actively and will work to resolve any real issues."

Adobe last year made a commitment to improve its security processes, but not everyone believes the company has done enough.