Adobe has announced that a critical vulnerability exists in three of its most ubiquitous applications; Flash Player, Reader and Acrobat.
The vulnerability, which Adobe states is currently being "actively exploited in the wild", can cause the company's software to crash and allow remote attackers to hijack control of the system.
According to Adobe, the exploit exists in various versions of Flash Player, Reader and Acrobat, and users of varying operating systems are at risk; with Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris and UNIX platforms all said to be affected.
Although a schedule for a fix hasn't yet been determined, Adobe states that users can protect themselves by upgrading to Flash Player 10.1 Release Candidate - a pre-final release of the software that isn't thought to be vulnerable to attack.
Adobe adds that "deleting, renaming, or removing access to the authplay.dll file that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x mitigates the threat for those products, but users will experience a non-exploitable crash or error message when opening a PDF file that contains SWF content."
Alternatively, users of Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat can also downgrade to version 8.x releases - all of which are said to be unaffected.
Adobe's latest security vulnerabilities arrive amid a high-profile spat with system manufacturer Apple; who opted not to support Adobe Flash on its iPhone and iPad devices. In recent weeks, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has claimed that "Flash is the number one reason Macs crash", adding that "we don't want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash".
