Lurene Grenier, a security researcher at Sourcefire, has published an unofficial patch for Adobe Reader 9 that is installed on a computer running the Microsoft Windows operating system. The patch comes with no guarantees and involves the replacement of a dll file in the Adobe Reader directory. Users should make sure to backup the dll before replacing it to be prepared for eventualities. Windows users with previous Adobe Reader versions will have to upgrade to Adobe Reader 9 before they can apply the patch.

There is another recommendation (by US-CERT)which is helpful for users of other operating systems or Windows users who do not like the idea of replacing a dll on the computer system:

• Disabling Javascript in Adobe Reader by going to Edit > Preferences > JavaScript and unchecking enable Acrobat JavaScript.
• Preventing IE from automatically displaying PDFs. This can be done via a Registry tweak described on the US-CERT notification.
• Disable rendering of PDFs within web pages. This can be done from the Edit-Preferences menu in Adobe Reader.

It is recommended to act swiftly to prevent that the vulnerability can get exploited on the computer system. Users of third party PDF software programs are not affected by the vulnerability.

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