Adobe Ships Flash Player Update, Patches Bugs In Reader

Adobe has shipped an update of its Adobe Flash Player and has issued patches for 42 bugs in the Adobe Reader and Acrobat software.

Adobe disclosed the security flaws in a security bulletin Tuesday. Many of the Reader bugs were rated "critical" because they could cause a system to crash or attackers could exploit them to place malware on unpatched systems.

The affected software included Adobe Reader X (10.0), the PDF viewer Adobe launched late last year; Adobe Reader 9.4.1 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh and Unix; and Adobe Acrobat X (10.0) and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh.

The patches mark the first time Adobe has issued a fix for Reader X.

The highlight of the Flash Player 10.2 for Windows, Mac and Linux is the new Stage Video feature, what Adobe describes as "a full hardware accelerated video pipeline" that improves video quality while consuming less processing power, according to a blog post by Tom Nguyen, Flash Player product manager.

Flash Player 10.2 also includes a number of new capabilities that were previewed in the earlier beta release, including custom native mouse cursors that allow developers to create animated cursors, hardware accelerated rendering support for the upcoming Internet Explorer 9, multiple monitor full-screen support, and enhanced sub-pixel rendering for better text readability.