Adobe kicks off patch roundup with critical fixes

Adobe has delivered its first quarterly roundup of security patches, fixing critical vulnerabilities in Reader and Acrobat that could cause the applications to crash, and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the systems.

The Adobe Security Bulletin APSB09-07 warns that the flaws could lead to denial-of-service attacks and remote code execution.

The advisory is the first of Adobe's quarterly security patch rollouts, after the firm announced it was moving to a regular schedule last month.

The patches apply to Windows and Macintosh systems, and Adobe said that updates for the Unix platform will be available on 16 June.

Adobe advised users of Reader and Acrobat to update their product installations to versions 9.1.2, 8.1.6 or 7.1.3, as well as applying the measures recommended in its bulletin.

In what will be a headache for IT managers, Microsoft has also issued its latest round of security patches today.

The majority were rated 'critical', and the firm urged users to update their systems as soon as possible.

Managed security services firm Qualys said that the threat and update management landscape is getting increasingly complicated for IT administrators.

"June's Patch Tuesday from Microsoft is already generating a major workload for IT administrators. Microsoft released its biggest number of patches in recent memory, not only for Windows systems, but for its Mac Office suite," said Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer at Qualys.

"Adobe has patches for its Reader product for Windows and Mac and, given the current popularity of the PDF file format with attackers, IT administrators should include the Adobe updates into their critical patch schedule."