One of the best ways to keep the Adobe Flash player from being used as a backdoor to infiltrate your computer is to keep it up to date. Over the past few months, Adobe has released several updates to patch what they call critical vulnerabilities.
Check your current Adobe Flash Player version: What version are you running now? Adobe Flash Player is a cross-platform browser-based application runtime that delivers uncompromised viewing of expressive applications, content, and videos across screens and browsers.
The situation is definitely critical. This is because the once unique runtime application is now being used to spread what is called the Locky Ransomware, a kind of malicious software that keeps a computer hostage until the owner pays up.
The vulnerability affects Flash Player on all operating systems – Windows, Mac, Chrome and Linux. Yes, even the seemingly impregnable Mac operating system is now vulnerable to attack through the Flash player. But Apple has found a way to fend off possible attacks, which is by blocking older versions of Adobe Flash Player.
Users with out-of-date versions of the plug-in will see a blocked message when attempting to view Flash content in a Safari browser. This can be “Blocked plug-in, “Flash out-of-date” or “Flash security alert”. The message effectively forces users to update flash player and obtain security fixes to patch vulnerabilities.
The latest update of the Adobe Flash Player was released in July. Version 22.0.0.209 for Windows, Chrome, Edge, Internet Explorer, and Mac, and version 11.2.202.632 for Linux.
The update was meant to fix 50 vulnerabilities that could do some real damage when left un-patched. Some of the patches were meant to fix a race condition, heap buffer overflow vulnerability, memory leak, stack corruption vulnerabilities, and other bugs that can lead to code execution.
No recent updates have been released so far, but users are advised to keep an eye out for news on vulnerabilities that usually come with exploit kits. One of the companies who spot vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player is Trend Micro, so you might want to follow them.
A word of caution: always check if an update is legitimate each and every time one is available.
Every techie needs a pair of sick headphones. Neurogadget recommends these Audio Technica Professional Studio Monitor Headphones for both their quality and their cool-factor.
Adobe Flash Player is the high performance, lightweight, highly expressive client runtime that delivers powerful and consistent user experiences across major operating systems, browsers, and mobile devices.
Adobe Flash Player is the choice of both individuals and organizations when it comes to a highly powerful and extremely adaptable multi-platform client runtime. Flash has many new features and continues to be the ubiquitous Web standard; this software is included with all major Web browsers.
Adobe Flash Player supports several data formats including AMF, SWF, XML and JSON. The multimedia formats which are supported by Flash Player include .MP3, .FLV, .JPEG, .GIF, .PNG and .RTMP. Other supported features include accelerated graphics rendering, multi-thread video decoding and webcam support for StageVideo. Adobe Flash Player also enables greater privacy controls, utilizing protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS).
Key features include:
- Advanced compression technology and multi-threaded video decoding provides High-quality, Low bandwidth video.
- Crisp artistic text, utilising an advanced text rendering engine.
- Stage 3D accelerated graphics rendering.
- Engaging Flash video, content and applications with full screen mode.
- Real-time dynamic effects consisting of numerous filters for Bevel, Glow, DropShadow, Blur, Displacement Map, Color Matrix, Convolution, Gradient Glow and Gradient Bevel.
- Blend modes, stroke enhancement and radial gradient.
Adobe Flash Latest Version For Mac
The versatility of Adobe Flash player is second to none, with animations that can incorporate both text and vector graphics. These animations typically do not take up large amounts of disk space and the contents of Flash animations can also be compressed to reduce their file sizes further.
Older Versions Of Flash Player
Adobe Flash Player is available across all major operating systems, tablets, smart phones and browsers, and it can deliver high quality digital content via a powerhouse package.