Earlier this week, Adobe released new versions of its Acrobat/Reader product line, to address a lone security vulnerability in earlier versions.

The new version of Acrobat Reader DC, which is the free — and widely used — version of Acrobat, is 2020.013.20074.

Recent versions of Acrobat and Reader usually manage to update themselves, but if you use either of them for viewing PDF files from untrusted sources, you should make sure you’re running the latest version. In Acrobat Reader DC, navigate its menu to Help > Check for Updates... If a newer version is available, you’ll see an option to install it.

Flash ‘Kill Switch’

We expected Adobe to show warnings in Flash after its development and support end in January 2021. Now comes news that Adobe is taking the rather drastic step of preventing Flash content from playing at all after January 12.

It’s not clear whether it will be possible to override this behaviour, so anyone who still relies on being able to play Flash content after January 12 should be looking into alternatives.