Critical Flash Player Flaw Patched

Adobe has fixed critical vulnerability within its much popular Flash Media Player that could let hackers to fully compromise an infected PC. Computers installed with Macintosh, Linux or Windows were considered to be susceptible to attack.

As part of a buffer patch package, the new security patch comes within Flash Player version 10.1. The buffer patch pack, in the meantime, fixes 32 known vulnerabilities in all.

The first time the security flaw was noticed was during early this month (June 2010). Says security company Websense, online miscreants are targeting the security flaws through e-mails, which encourage readers to open PDF attachments and booby-trapped websites. Unfortunately, no major anti-virus engine could detect the malware programs employed within the exploits as of June 9, 2010. That is over 5 days since Adobe revealed the assaults for the first time, according to Websense. Theregister.co.uk reported this on June 10, 2010.

The security company highlights that no sooner are the exploits run that users' computers become contaminated with backdoor trojans as well as other malware.

Remarking about the latest security update, Paul Betlem of the Flash Player Engineering Team of Adobe stated that it was a colossal effort, which resulted in considerable changes to software architecture, as per the news published by bbc.co.uk on June 11, 2010.

Furthermore, Writer and Editor Michael Calore at news website Wired too commented that the new release was obviously a big one for Adobe since it came just when there were accusations against the company regarding its software's drawbacks, reported bbc.co.uk on June 11, 2010.

Importantly, Adobe computes that over 95% of global PCs have Flash Player deployed. Several websites too utilize it to flaunt games and videos and other multimedia content. Therefore, it's quite possible that numerous end-users are vulnerable to undesirable assaults.

In the end, security specialists recommend that Adobe users need to update their software with the latest release so that malware can be stopped from compromising their systems. Indeed, cyber-criminals know that users often fail to install patches immediately as the updates are made available and so exploit the situation to their maximum advantage, the specialists outline.

Related article: Critical Infrastructure Flaw Vulnerable to Hacking

» SPAMfighter News - 6/21/2010