Adobe Patches Sandbox-Escaping Vulnerabilities in Reader, Acrobat

Adobe on Wednesday issued patches to address recently disclosed security vulnerabilities in its Adobe Reader and Acrobat products that were found being actively exploited in the wild in targeted attacks. 

Last week, security researchers from FireEye identified a PDF zero-day that was being used in targeted attacks. Shortly after, Adobe confirmed the existence of two critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader and Acrobat XI for Windows and Macintosh that were being exploited in attacks.

The exploits were seen in extremely targeted attacks against high profile targets, and were sophisticated effort that appear to be the first to successfully escape Adobe’s “protected mode” sandbox.

Several security experts believe these latest exploits and associated attacks were the work of Nation-state actors.

Today, Adobe has released fixes to resolve the two vulnerabilities, CVE-2013-0640 and CVE-2013-0641, and recommends users update their product installations to the latest versions.

Adobe Reader users on Windows can also find the update here. 

Adobe Reader users on Macintosh can also find the update here.

Adobe Reader users on Linux can find the appropriate update here. 

Listen to David Lenoe, Adobe’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) group manager, speak with Ryan Naraine in a podcast about the frustrations of responding to the “partial disclosure” of security vulnerabilities.