Strategic Security Survey: Global Threat, Local Pain

Adobe on Monday warned that a critical vulnerability in the most current version of its Flash Player is being actively exploited on Windows computers.

Adobe's Reader and Acrobat software are also affected by this vulnerability but the company said that it isn't aware of active attempts to exploit the flaw in either of these two programs at the moment.

"This vulnerability (CVE-2010-2884) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system," Adobe said in an e-mail.

The vulnerable software includes: Adobe Flash Player 10.1.82.76 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Solaris, and Adobe Flash Player 10.1.92.10 for Android; Adobe Reader 9.3.4 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX; and Adobe Acrobat 9.3.4 and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh.

Adobe said that it plans to release a patch to address the flaw in its Flash Player software during the week of September 27, 2010. Fixes for its Reader and Acrobat software are planned for the week of October 4, 2010.

This marks the second zero-day vulnerability affecting Adobe's Acrobat and Reader software. On Wednesday, Adobe warned about a different bug affecting Acrobat and Reader. This vulnerability (CVE-2010-2883) also could cause a crash and also is being actively exploited.

Affected software includes: Adobe Reader 9.3.4 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX; and Adobe Acrobat 9.3.4 and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh.

Adobe plans to deliver a fix for CVE-2010-2883 during the week of October 4, 2010, with the other fix for Acrobat and Reader.

In March, security company F-Secure said that Acrobat/Reader was the application that was most frequently targeted by malware in 2009.

Adobe is planning to add a security "sandbox" to the next major Windows release of its Reader software later this year.