Adobe has issued a security bulletin warning that all versions of Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat since version 7 have been found to have a critical security error. The error comes in the form of a buffer overflow error that can crash the application and possibly allow a hacker to take control of the affected system. According to Adobe's bulletin, there are current reports of this exploit being used. This exploit affects Adobe Reader, Adobe Acrobat Standard, Pro, and Pro Extended, and Adobe has not specified whether the exploit is Windows-only or if it affects Mac OS X computers as well.

Unfortunately, Adobe does not have a fix ready for this vulnerability in place and doesn't expect one to be available until March 11th, so until then you should consider using a non Adobe application capable of handling PDFs for all your PDF-viewing needs. On OS X, you can use the Preview application that comes with the OS, and on Windows you can use an alternative like the freely available Foxit Reader 3.0.

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