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After a week delay, Adobe has finally pushed out critical security updates for its frequently-attacked Reader and Acrobat PDF software packages to patch serious vulnerabilities that could lead to computers being compromised. The new versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat released Tuesday for both Windows and Macintosh computers address eight vulnerabilities, five of which could allow for remote code execution . The remaining three vulnerabilities involve a sandbox bypass vulnerability that can be exploited to escalate an attacker’s privileges on Windows, a denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability related to memory corruption, and a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw that only affects the programs on the Mac platform. According to Adobe's advisory , applying the patches will involve a system restart. The affected versions are: Adobe Reader XI (11.0.08) and earlier 11.x versions for Windows Adobe Reader XI (11.0.07) and earlier 11.x versions for Macintosh Adobe Reade...

Adobe has just released new versions of its Acrobat DC, Reader and Photoshop CC for Windows and macOS users that patch 48 vulnerabilities in its software. A total of 47 vulnerabilities affect Adobe Acrobat and Reader applications, and one critical remote code execution flaw has been patched in Adobe Photoshop CC. Out of 47, Adobe Acrobat and Reader affect with 24 critical vulnerabilities —categorized as Double Free, Heap Overflow, Use-after-free, Out-of-bounds write, Type Confusion, and Untrusted pointer dereference—which if exploited, could allow arbitrary code execution in the context of the targeted user. Rest of the 23 flaws, including Security Bypass, Out-of-bounds read, Memory Corruption, NTLM SSO hash theft, and HTTP POST newline injection via XFA submission, are marked as important and can lead to information disclosure or security bypass. The above-listed vulnerabilities impact the Windows and macOS versions of Acrobat DC (Consumer and Classic 2015), Acrobat Rea...

Next time just be careful while swiping your credit card at small retailers or trendy stores that use Square Reader to accept credit card payments. The increasingly popular and widely used Square Reader can be easily turned into a skimming device that can be used to steal your credit card data, a group of researchers warned. Square Reader is a tiny device that allows small retailers to easily accept credit and debit card payments without having to spend the money on the traditional point of sale systems. However, despite its convenience, this cheap and easy-to-use alternative has a critical flaw that could allow anyone to easily steal your payment card information. All an attacker need is a screwdriver, superglue, and roughly 10 minutes to turn the latest generation Square Reader into a tiny, portable card skimmer . Converting a New Generation Square Reader into a Card Skimmer? A team of three security researchers from Boston University has discovered a w...

Adobe has released security updates to fix seven vulnerabilities in its Flash and Air platforms and one in its Reader and Acrobat which, according to the company, is being exploited by attackers in wild " ...in limited, isolated attacks targeting Adobe Reader users on Windows. " The vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to " take control of affected systems " marked critical by the company. A new, out-of-band patch addresses a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2014-0546) in Adobe Reader and Acrobat that offers an attacker the possibility to bypass sandbox protection and has been leveraged in "limited, isolated attacks" against Windows users. " These updates resolve a sandbox bypass vulnerability that could be exploited to run native code with escalated privileges on Windows, " Adobe warned. The lone vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat and Reader was reported by Kaspersky Lab Global Research and Analysis Team director Costin Raiu and V...

Adobe has released  Patch Tuesday updates  for the month of May with fixes for multiple vulnerabilities spanning 12 different products, including a zero-day flaw affecting Adobe Reader that's actively exploited in the wild. The list of updated applications includes Adobe Experience Manager , Adobe InDesign , Adobe Illustrator , Adobe InCopy , Adobe Genuine Service , Adobe Acrobat and Reader, Magento , Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop Application, Adobe Media Encoder , Adobe After Effects , Adobe Medium, and Adobe Animate. In a security bulletin, the company  acknowledged  it received reports that the flaw "has been exploited in the wild in limited attacks targeting Adobe Reader users on Windows." Tracked as CVE-2021-28550, the zero-day concerns an arbitrary code execution flaw that could allow adversaries to execute virtually any command on target systems. While the targeted attacks took aim at Windows users of Adobe Reader, the issue affects both Windows and macO...

Multiple threat actors are weaponizing a design flaw in Foxit PDF Reader to deliver a variety of malware such as Agent Tesla, AsyncRAT, DCRat, NanoCore RAT, NjRAT, Pony, Remcos RAT, and XWorm. "This exploit triggers security warnings that could deceive unsuspecting users into executing harmful commands," Check Point  said  in a technical report. "This exploit has been used by multiple threat actors, from e-crime to espionage." It's worth noting that Adobe Acrobat Reader – which is more prevalent in sandboxes or antivirus solutions – is not susceptible to this specific exploit, thus contributing to the campaign's low detection rate. The issue stems from the fact that the application shows "OK" as the default selected option in a pop-up when users are asked to trust the document prior to enabling certain features to avoid potential security risks. Once a user clicks OK, they are displayed a second pop-up warning that the file is about to execute...

Are you using Foxit PDF Reader? If yes, then you need to watch your back. Security researchers have discovered two critical zero-day security vulnerabilities in Foxit Reader software that could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code on a targeted computer, if not configured to open files in the Safe Reading Mode. The first vulnerability (CVE-2017-10951) is a command injection bug discovered by researcher Ariele Caltabiano working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), while the second bug (CVE-2017-10952) is a file write issue found by Offensive Security researcher Steven Seeley. An attacker can exploit these bugs by sending a specially crafted PDF file to a Foxit user and enticing them to open it. Foxit refused to patch both the vulnerabilities because they would not work with the "safe reading mode" feature that fortunately comes enabled by default in Foxit Reader. "Foxit Reader & PhantomPDF has a Safe Reading Mode which is enabled by d...

If you're one of the 400 million Android users out there who have installed Adobe Reader app that helps you to view PDF documents on mobile devices, then you should immediately update your app from Google Play Store. Adobe has released an updated Adobe Reader 11.2.0 version to addresses an important vulnerability that could be exploited to gain 'remote code execution' ability on the affected system. According to the Adobe  advisory , vulnerability ( CVE-2014-0514 ) resides in the implementation of JavaScript APIs on Adobe Reader 11.2 that could be exploited to execute arbitrary code within Adobe Reader. Adobe vulnerability discovered by security researcher  Yorick Koster of Securify BV , claimed that an attacker can create a specially crafted PDF file containing malicious JavaScript code that triggers when the victim will try to open it using affected Adobe Reader for Android Operating System. Multiple attack vectors are available to deploy a malicio...

Critical Zero-day Vulnerability in Adobe Reader Researchers at the Lockheed Martin Computer Incident Response Team (CRT) and members of the Defense Security Information Exchange informed Adobe that their products were being exploited by hackers. The exploit affects all versions of Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat 9.x and higher, including Adobe Reader X and Adobe Acrobat X (10.1.1) for Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX. “ This U3D memory corruption vulnerability (CVE-2011-2462) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system ,” wrote Adobe in their incident report, explaining that this essentially a memory-corruption and privilege escalation exploit. “ There are reports that the vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild in limited, targeted attacks against Adobe Reader 9.x on Windows. Adobe Reader X Protected Mode and Acrobat X Protected View mitigations would prevent an exploit of this kind from executing. ” According to a blog po...

Adobe's  Patch Tuesday update  for September 2023 comes with a patch for a critical actively exploited security flaw in Acrobat and Reader that could permit an attacker to execute malicious code on susceptible systems. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-26369, is rated 7.8 for severity on the CVSS scoring system and impacts both Windows and macOS versions of Acrobat DC, Acrobat Reader DC, Acrobat 2020, and Acrobat Reader 2020. Described as an out-of-bounds write, successful exploitation of the bug could lead to code execution by opening a specially crafted PDF document. Adobe did not disclose any additional details about the issue or the targeting involved. "Adobe is aware that CVE-2023-26369 has been exploited in the wild in limited attacks targeting Adobe Acrobat and Reader," the company  acknowledged  in an advisory. CVE-2023-26369 affects the below versions - Acrobat DC (23.003.20284 and earlier versions) - Fixed in 23.006.20320 Acrobat Reader DC (23...

Group-IB , a Russian cybercrime investigation company has discovered a zero-day vulnerability, affects Adobe Reader X and Adobe Reader XI. The vulnerability is also included in new modified version of Blackhole Exploit-Kit , which is used for the distributing the banking Trojans (Zeus, Spyeye, Carberp, Citadel) with the help of exploitation different vulnerabilities in client-side software. The particular exploit is available in underground forums for as much as $50,000 and bug is dangerous because it permits cybercriminals to run arbitrary shellcode by bypassing the sandbox feature integrated into the more recent versions of Adobe Reader. For now this flaw is distributed only in only small circles of the underground but it has the potential for much larger post-exploitation methods. The exploit is limited to  Microsoft Windows installations of Adobe Reader and it can’t be fully executed until the user closes his Web browser (...

I hope you had biggest, happiest and craziest New Year celebration, but now it’s time to come back at work and immediately update your systems to patch new security flaws that could exploit your computer just by opening a PDF file. Adobe has issued an out-of-band security update to patch two critical vulnerabilities in the company's Acrobat and Reader for both the Windows and macOS operating systems. Though the San Jose, California-based software company did not give details about the vulnerabilities, it did classify the security flaws as critical since they allow privilege escalation and arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user. Both the vulnerabilities were reported to Adobe by security researchers--Abdul-Aziz Hariri and Sebastian Apelt—from Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI). Critical Adobe Acrobat and Reader Vulnerabilities The first vulnerability, reported by Apelt and identified as CVE-2018-16011, is a use-after-free bug that can lead...

Good morning readers, it's Patch Tuesday again—the day of the month when Adobe and Microsoft release security patches for their software. Adobe just released its monthly security updates to address a total of 40 security vulnerabilities in several of its products, including Flash Player, Adobe Acrobat and Reader, and Shockwave Player. According to an advisory, Adobe Acrobat and Reader applications for Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS operating systems are vulnerable to a total 21 vulnerabilities, 11 of which have been rated as critical in severity. Upon successful exploitation, all critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat and Reader software lead to arbitrary code execution, allowing attackers to take complete control over targeted systems. Remaining ten vulnerabilities in the most widely used PDF reader are all rated as important and could lead to information disclosure. If your system hasn't yet detected the availability of the new update automatically, you sh...

This week you have quite a long list of updates to follow from Microsoft, Adobe as well as Firefox. Despite announcing plans to kill its monthly patch notification for Windows 10, the tech giant has issued its May 2015 Patch Tuesday , releasing 13 security bulletins that addresses a total of 48 security vulnerabilities in many of their products. Separately, Adobe has also pushed a massive security update to fix a total of 52 vulnerabilities in its Flash Player, Reader, AIR and Acrobat software. Moreover, Mozilla has fixed 13 security flaws in its latest stable release of Firefox web browser, Firefox 38, including five critical flaws. First from the Microsoft’s side: MICROSOFT PATCH TUESDAY Three out of 13 security bulletins issued by the company are rated as 'critical', while the rest are 'important' in severity, with none of these vulnerabilities are actively exploited at this time. The affected products include Internet Explorer (IE), ...

Adobe has missed dozens of vulnerabilities in Reader in this week’s Patch Tuesday run according to Google engineers who reported the flaws. Sixteen vulnerabilities still affected the Windows and Mac OS X versions, while 31 critical and “trivially exploitable” bugs were found in the Linux application. Of particular concern to Google’s Mateusz Jurczyk and Gynvael Coldwind are bugs in Reader for Linux, although other issues affect versions for Windows and OS X. For the Linux version, which went completely unpatched, Adobe and Google have been working together to counter 14 “new unique crashes” and nine “test-cases” that were potentially exploitable for remote code execution. When Adobe released a new version of Reader for Windows and Mac OS X earlier this week, it patched 12 vulnerabilities, but another 16 remained unpatched. Jurczyk and Coldwind decided to come forward with information on those flaws in the interest of user safety, as Adobe has no plans to issue additional out of band ...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday  added  a high-severity flaw in Adobe Acrobat Reader to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. Tracked as  CVE-2023-21608  (CVSS score: 7.8), the vulnerability has been described as a use-after-free bug that can be exploited to achieve remote code execution (RCE) with the privileges of the current user. A patch for the flaw was released by Adobe in January 2023. HackSys security researchers Ashfaq Ansari and Krishnakant Patil were  credited  with discovering and reporting the flaw. The  following versions  of the software are impacted - Acrobat DC - 22.003.20282 (Win), 22.003.20281 (Mac) and earlier versions (fixed in 22.003.20310) Acrobat Reader DC - 22.003.20282 (Win), 22.003.20281 (Mac) and earlier versions (fixed in 22.003.20310) Acrobat 2020 - 20.005.30418 and earlier versions (fixed in 20.005.30436) Acro...

Adobe today released its monthly software updates to patch a total of 87 security vulnerabilities in its Adobe Acrobat and Reader, Flash Player and Media Encoder, most of which could lead to arbitrary code execution attacks or worse. None of the flaws patched this month in Adobe products has been found exploited in the wild. Out of 87 total flaws, a whopping number of vulnerabilities (i.e., 84 in total) affect Adobe Acrobat and Reader applications alone, where 42 of them are critical and rest 42 are important in severity. Upon successful exploitation, all critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat and Reader software lead to arbitrary code execution, allowing attackers to take complete control over targeted systems. Adobe has released updated versions of Acrobat and Reader software for Windows and macOS operating systems to address these security vulnerabilities. The update for Adobe Flash Player , which will receive security patch updates until the end of 2020, comes this...

Book Review : Defense against the Black Arts How Hackers Do What They Do and How to Protect against It Ben Rothke  write a review of a   new book on hacking " Defense against the Black Arts: How Hackers Do What They Do and How to Protect against It ". Authors are Jesse Varsalone, Matthew Mcfadden, Michael Schearer and Sean Morrissey. " If there ever was a book that should not be judged by its title, Defense against the Black Arts: How Hackers Do What They Do and How to Protect against It, is that book. Even if one uses the definition in The New Hackers Dictionary of 'a collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by implication) mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular application or systems area', that really does not describe this book. The truth is that hacking is none of the above. If anything, it is a process that is far from mysterious, but rather aether to describe. With that, the book does a good job of providing the reader with the information ne...

No, it's not a patch Tuesday. It's the third Tuesday of the month, and as The Hacker News shared an early heads-up late last week on Twitter, Adobe today finally released pre-announced out-of-band security updates to patch a total of 82 security vulnerabilities across its various products. The affected products that received security patches today include: Adobe Acrobat and Reader Adobe Experience Manager Adobe Experience Manager Forms Adobe Download Manager Out of 82 security vulnerabilities, 45 are rated critical, and all of them affect Adobe Acrobat and Reader and which, if exploited successfully, could lead to arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user. A majority of critical-rated vulnerabilities (i.e., 26) in Adobe Acrobat and Reader reside due to use-after-free, 6 due to out-of-bounds write, 4 are type confusion bugs, 4 due to untrusted pointer dereference, 3 are heap overflow bugs, one buffer overrun and one race condition issue. Ad...

Threat actors have been exploiting a previously unknown zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Reader using maliciously crafted PDF documents since at least December 2025. The finding, detailed by EXPMON's Haifei Li, has been described as a highly-sophisticated PDF exploit. The artifact ("Invoice540.pdf") first appeared on the VirusTotal platform on November 28, 2025. A second sample was uploaded to VirusTotal on March 23, 2026. Given the name of the PDF document, it's likely that there is an element of social engineering involved, with the attackers luring unsuspecting users into opening the files on Adobe Reader. Once launched, it automatically triggers the execution of obfuscated JavaScript to harvest sensitive data and receive additional payloads. Security researcher Gi7w0rm, in an X post , said the PDF documents observed contain Russian language lures and refer to issues regarding current events related to the oil and gas industry i...