Adobe Reader 9.4 released as security update on Oct 5

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 6 Oct 2010 6:58 am

Adobe Reader 9.4 was released on October 5, 2010, as the second phase of a fix for a critical vulnerability in both the player and the embedded Flash Player. Back on September 20 Adobe patched its standalone Flash Players for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera. Later, Google released a new version of its Chrome browser, which contains an embedded custom version of Flash.

Millions of computers are running Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Cyber criminals know this and use exploit kits to target older or vulnerable software that plugs into otherwise secure browsers. More Windows computers are exploited via unpatched third party software than through direct attacks against Windows itself.

Please take a few minutes to make sure that you have the latest version of Adobe Reader, Acrobat (a commercial program used to create pdf files), and Flash. Reader can be checked for updates by going to the menu item "Help" and mousing down to Check For Updates. Once tan update is downloaded you will need to close Reader to update it.

Go to www.Adobe.com, then one at a time, click on the buttons for Flash Player, Reader and Shockwave and upgrade your installed versions to the current, patched version of each.You should close your browser and re-open it between updates, to install the new plug-in version of these items. Do this with Internet Explorer and any other browsers you use, as they use entirely different versions of Flash, Shockwave and the Reader browser plug-ins.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 6 Oct 2010 7:10 am

You can use the Secunia Online Software Inspector to scan you computers for insecure software. It will show any programs that have updates available and provide links to the product or download pages. It is a good idea to run this from your browser at least once a month.

The Secunia Online Software Inspector requires Java. You will be prompted to install Java first, if it isn't present on your PC and available in the browser you are using. Java is also a targeted technology and is updated every so often.