As reported in a recent Adobe blog post, Adobe Reader security and application issues continue. Adobe describes the most recent issue as a “critical vulnerability” that may “cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.” The problem involves Adobe Reader and Acrobat versions 9.1 and earlier in Windows and Macintosh, in addition to Unix versions. Adobe recommends that users disable javascript in the application as a temporary fix.

While practicelaw users have not reported any specific security issues, users and staff report that Adobe Reader 9.1 crashes and can make the printing of PDFs unbearably slow. We have already recommended that you do not upgrade from Adobe Reader 9.0 to 9.1 because of reported crashes when using 9.1. We are taking the added step today of advising the use of alternative PDF readers, such as Foxit Reader, both to avoid application crashes and to minimize potential security problems.  Initial use of FoxIt on our end shows that it works well with practicelaw forms.

We will continue to monitor this issue and will report back after we review and test an expected fix from Adobe, which Adobe plans to release on May 12.