Adobe has announced a vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat that is actively being exploited in limited, targeted attacks. Adobe Reader X Protected Mode and Adobe Acrobat X Protected View prevent the exploit from being able to execute. Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9, however, are vulnerable to the exploit. For this reason, Adobe is preparing a patch for version 9 no later than the week of December 12th, 2011. Adobe Reader X and Acrobat X will be patched with the next quarterly update January 10th, 2012.
The security advisory has the full details.
A critical vulnerability has been identified in Adobe Reader X (10.1.1) and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh, Adobe Reader 9.4.6 and earlier 9.x versions for UNIX, and Adobe Acrobat X (10.1.1) and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh.
This U3D memory corruption vulnerability (CVE-2011-2462) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. 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.
We are in the process of finalizing a fix for the issue and expect to make available an update for Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x for Windows no later than the week of December 12, 2011.
Because Adobe Reader X Protected Mode and Adobe Acrobat X Protected View would prevent an exploit of this kind from executing, we are currently planning to address this issue in Adobe Reader X and Acrobat X for Windows with the next quarterly security update for Adobe Reader and Acrobat, currently scheduled for January 10, 2012. We are planning to address this issue in Adobe Reader and Acrobat X and earlier versions for Macintosh as part of the next quarterly update scheduled for January 10, 2012. An update to address this issue in Adobe Reader 9.x for UNIX is planned for January 10, 2012.
It sounds like Lockheed Martin was the ones targeted with this vulnerability given Adobe’s credit.
Adobe would like to thank Lockheed Martin CIRT (LM-CIRT) and MITRE for reporting this issue and for working with Adobe to help protect our customers.
Brad Arkin provides some background on the vulnerability in the ASSET post that accompanied the announcement. He also pleads that everybody update to Reader X for security reasons..