14 DAY TRIAL // After Microsoft's announcement on Wednesday, regarding the new flaw discovered in Outlook Express, today another software developer has released a statement regarding the discovery of such a problem in one of its programs.
Thus, Adobe Systems Inc. has posted on its site a warning message, referring to Adobe Reader's versions 5.0.9, 5.0.10, which were written for the Unix computer operating system.
Apparently, a hacker could take control over a system by exploiting this security breach, which can be achieved by sending maliciously written PDF files. Once these files are accessed, the user's hard disks are sitting ducks for the hackers.
Moreover, Adobe has also launched a patch that fixes this flaw, which has been discovered by the security outfit iDefense. However, Adobe's officials say that there are unaware of any security breaches resulting from the software flaw.
Adobe Reader has been distributed in over 500,000 free copies from its initial release in 1993, but few of them have been written especially for Unix, and that is why the risk of security breaches is rather low.