While Microsoft kept security managers busy with one of its largest Patch Tuesday bulletins ever, Adobe was quietly fixing its own flaws, which may already be known to the hacking community.

Critical vulnerabilities have been identified in versions 9.1.3, 8.1.6, and 7.1.3 of Adobe Reader and Acrobat, according to a security update issued today by Adobe.

"These vulnerabilities could cause the application to crash, and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system," the company said.

Among other flaws, Adobe's patch resolves a heap overflow vulnerability that could lead to code execution (CVE-2009-3459), the company said. There are reports this issue is being exploited in the wild via limited, targeted attacks, Adobe acknowledged.

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