Adobe discovers a “critical” security issue in all versions of Flash Player, plus Acrobat and Reader. A fix is planned for release next week.

If you use Adobe’s Flash Player at all, tread cautiously. The company released a security advisory late yesterday revealing that a “critical vulnerability” was found in pretty much all versions of the multimedia platform as well as in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader.

Affected versions include: “Adobe Flash Player 10.2.152.33 and earlier versions (Adobe Flash Player 10.2.154.18 and earlier for Chrome users) for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris operating systems, Adobe Flash Player 10.1.106.16 and earlier versions for Android, and the Authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat X (10.0.1) and earlier 10.x and 9.x versions of Reader and Acrobat for Windows and Macintosh operating systems.”

The vulnerability could result in a crash or potentially be exploited by a hacker to “take control of the affected system.” Worse, there are reports already that this security hole is being exploited via a Flash file (.swf) embedded in a Microsoft Excel (.xls) spreadsheet that arrives as an e-mail attachment. So for the two of you who happily download everything that comes into your mailbox, even if you don’t recognize the sender… stop. It appears that there are no similar exploits out there for Reader or Acrobat yet; Adobe notes that the Protected Mode in Reader X “would prevent an exploit of this kind from executing.”

via Adobe Flash Player has ‘critical’ security issue, won’t be addressed until next week.