E-mail spam is practically a way of life in this day and age but that doesn’t mean we have to accept the way things are. That especially holds true for Google as the company recently outlined some measures they have taken to reduce spam by preventing hacks in the first place.

In a post on Google’s public policy blog, security engineer Mike Hearn highlighted the fact that most e-mail programs, including Gmail, are very good at detecting spammy messages and sending them directly to the recycle bin. As such, spammers began to change their approach in 2010 by hacking into Google accounts and sending customized messages to people on a user’s contact list.

Adobe has announced that it will release emergency patches for two vulnerabilities that were found in its Reader and Acrobat software last week.

The company said on Wednesday that it was investigating a report by security firm Fireeye, which had received "PDF files tainted with malicious software" that could take advantage of a newly discovered flaw.

"Adobe plans to make available updates for Adobe Reader and Acrobat XI for Windows and Macintosh, X for Windows and Macintosh, 9.5.3 and earlier 9.x versions for Windows and Macintosh, and Adobe Reader 9.5.3 and earlier 9.x versions for Linux, during the week of February 18, 2013," the company said Saturday in its security incident response team's blog.

Microsoft this week patched 14 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer (IE), preparing the browser for its time as a target early next month at the annual Pwn2Own hacking contest.

On Tuesday, Microsoft patched 57 vulnerabilities, including 14 affecting IE that were delivered in two separate security updates. One of those updates, MS13-009, fixed 13 flaws, a dozen of them judged "critical," the company's most serious threat rating. The second update, MS13-010, patched a single vulnerability. That bug was also pegged critical.

Researchers from security firm FireEye claim that attackers are actively using a remote code execution exploit that works against the latest versions of Adobe Reader 9, 10 and 11.

"Today, we identified that a PDF zero-day [vulnerability] is being exploited in the wild, and we observed successful exploitation on the latest Adobe PDF Reader 9.5.3, 10.1.5, and 11.0.1," the FireEye researchers said late Tuesday in a blog post.

The exploit drops and loads two DLL files on the system. One file displays a bogus error message and opens a PDF document that's used as a decoy, the FireEye researchers said.