Adobe finally patches Flash Player vulnerability used in 0-day exploits
January 27, 2015
By now, most of you will have heard about the recently discovered Flash Player vulnerabilities being exploited by a crime pack, called the Angler Exploit Kit (Angler EK for short). I wrote a blog article about it on January 22, 2015.
I posted three updates to my article, ending yesterday morning, alerting to an upcoming final patch from Adobe. I also noted that some computers were having the new version pushed to them via the Adobe Flash Player automatic updater (if it was fully enabled). But, the rest of the folks who had to update manually were left of out the security update.
That has finally changed today, Tuesday, January 27, 2015. The About Adobe Flash Player page now shows version 16.0.0.296 as the most current version. You should not delay after reading this. Go to that page in each browser installed on your computers and see if those browsers are up to date or not. If not, use the link labeled "Player Download Center" to get the new version for your operating system and browser type.
After updating Flash, it's a good idea to close and restart the browser.
Note:
There are different flavors of Flash for different brands and versions of browsers. Internet Explorer always used an "ActiveX" version (which may have changed or be changing in IE 11 forward). Firefox and Opera use a different version known as a "Plugin." Google Chrome has Flash built right into the architecture of the browser, requiring the browser itself to be updated. That is about to change as a standalone installer has just become available for advanced users of Chrome. People using Mac computers would have to manually install and update Flash, as Apple doesn't support it at all. Linux users also have to manually check for software updates and apply new Flash versions themselves.
Wrap-up:
If you missed the hoopla, read my previous blog article, titled: New Flash Player zero day exploit in the wild.
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