Another Adobe zero day strikes

Adobe has been hit by another zero-day vulnerability, which has already been picked up by hackers targeting Windows machines.

The U3D memory flaw affects Adobe Reader X and earlier versions for Windows and Mac, as well as Adobe Reader 9.4.6 and earlier 9.x versions for UNIX. Adobe Acrobat X and earlier versions for Windows and Mac are also affected.

"This vulnerability (CVE-2011-2462) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system," the software maker said in a blog post.

"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 said it is working on a fix, which will be ready "no later than the week of 12 December.

"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 10 January 2012," Adobe continued.

"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 10 January 2012. An update to address this issue in Adobe Reader 9.x for UNIX is planned for 10 January 2012."

Adobe software has been hit by a plethora of flaws in the past. One of the reasons the late Steve Jobs wished to distance Apple from Flash was because of security issues.

The software developer confirmed last month it was giving up on creating Flash for mobile browsers, punting for HTML5 instead.