Adobe released an important update for the macOS version of Adobe Acrobat in order to solve a series of vulnerabilities identified and notified by the researcher Yuebin Sun of Tencent's Security Xuanwu Labs which if exploited could have enabled them to obtain a root access to a Mac going unnoticed.
The vulnerabilities were reported directly to Adobe, underlining the fact that even with the System Integrity Protection feature of macOS, enabled by default, they could have allowed root access to an Adobe Acrobat DC user on Mac.
"Today Adobe Acrobat Reader DC for macOS has solved three critical vulnerabilities (CVE-2020-9615, CVE-2020-9614, CVE-2020-9613) that I have notified. The only requirement to exploit the vulnerabilities that Adobe Acrobat Reader DC is installed. A common user on macOS (with SIP enabled) can exploit vulnerabilities locally to raise privileges at the root level by going unnoticed "said Sun. In any case, well specify, to exploit the vulnerabilities physical access to the system is required.
In addition to fixing the vulnerabilities, the update released by Adobe also adds the Protected Mode feature to resolve additional potential security problems. It is a sandbox mode that covers all the features present in Acrobat. The Protected Mode function, however, is disabled by default and therefore the user must activate it voluntarily. To do this, simply go to the application preferences from the Edit menu, go to the Security section and then select Enable Protected Mode at Startup. After that, restart Acrobat.
The technical detail of the vulnerabilities illustrated by Sun on this page, while information on updating Adobe Acrobat DC for macOS is available here. As for the update, simply open the Acrobat application on Mac and go to the Help menu and click on the Check for Updates item.