CVE-2013-0640
HIGHCVE-2013-0640 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) Out-of-bounds Write vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-03) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2013-0640 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x before 9.5.4, 10.x before 10.1.6, and 11.x before 11.0.02 allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (memory corruption)…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-03-03. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-03-24.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2013-0640.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2013-0640 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE sits: patch-first territory.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 0 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 50–90% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Description
Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x before 9.5.4, 10.x before 10.1.6, and 11.x before 11.0.02 allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (memory corruption) via a crafted PDF document, as exploited in the wild in February 2013.
Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Adobe Acrobat Reader - ASLR + DEP Bypass with Sandbox Bypass
by w3bd3vil & abh1sek · Nov 28, 2013
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for the affected component. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Remediation status
No patched version of the affected component has shipped for CVE-2013-0640 yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.
Mitigate without a patch
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2013-0640 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2013-0640. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
This issue affects the version of Adobe Acroread as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6. Updates will be released as soon as they are made generally available by Adobe.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2013-0640 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2013-0640 across dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.