Adobe Flash Player

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Are you running the latest version?

Why you should uninstall Adobe Flash Player

UPDATE (13/07/15): Adobe has confirmed (yesterday) that more critical vulnerabilities in Flash Player have been identified. At the moment there is no patch for these issues as Adobe are working on a fix - until then, even if you have updated your system, you are risk. This underlines why we think you should disable/uninstall Flash Player as soon as possible.

Adobe has just released another critical update to its Flash Player to plug a serious flaw identified following the recent Hacking Team breach.

These updates address critical vulnerabilities that could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.

The latest Windows/Mac version is v18.0.0.203, so check what version you are currently running. If you aren’t running the latest version of Flash Player on your system then you are at risk!

What is Adobe Flash Player?

Adobe Flash Player is a browser plugin that allows you to stream video and audio, and run certain internet applications - many people know it as Shockwave Flash. Its release (nearly 20 years ago), heralded the first wave of interactive and multimedia-based websites.

A long run of security issues

This latest critical update comes hot on the heels of yet another in a long line of security updates for the software. Just a couple weeks ago, there was another security scare when a different vulnerability allowed 3rd parties to take control of a system using Flash Player just by loading up an infected Flash file.

Adobe is aware of reports that [the bug] is being actively exploited in the wild via limited, targeted attacks. Systems running Internet Explorer for Windows 7 and below, as well as Firefox on Windows XP, are known targets.

More worrying is that in the past, Adobe has been very slow in fixing known vulnerabilities within Flash Player i.e., in 2010 Adobe apologised for taking over a year to fix a "critical vulnerability".

Do you need Flash Player?

The web pages that power the internet have moved on considerably since Flash was introduced. With HTML5 becoming more and more prevalent, we no longer need Flash to deliver rich, embedded content, with many websites providing Flash Player alternatives (including YouTube and Spotify). In addition, most software developers moved away from using Flash for internet applications a number of years ago. However, saying that, there are still a lot of websites that utilise Flash to deliver their content - especially for online gaming and some media streaming sites. So, if you can’t uninstall Flash Player quite yet, please keep it updated!

How to uninstall Adobe Flash Player

There's an uninstaller for Windows and Mac-os , as well as uninstall instructions for Linux. You can also disable the Chrome plugin.

 

ARTICLE TAGS: ADOBE FLASH PLAYER

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