Adobe Flash Player users are being urged by the company to download and update the latest patch that addresses some major holes in security of the program, and the devices that the program is running on. The fix is geared to adequately fix the flaw that’s called CVE-2014-8439 after Adobe attempted to remedy the issue before having the issue re-exposed due to just slight modification of the bug. That being said, the flaw could allow attackers to use the web browser of a weakened computer to install malicious software and take advantage of the computer that it’s operating from.

All Adobe users are urged to update to the latest Flash Player that is available depending on their operating system. For example, Windows and Mac users will have to update to a version listed as 15.0.0.189 while Linux users will have to update to 11.2.202.411. For users who use Internet Explorer 10 or 11, or Google Chrome – Adobe will be taking care of the updating process themselves by patching through the update themselves.

There are a couple of methods for updating to the latest version of Adobe Flash Player. First, users can go to the Flash website and manually make the update happen by downloading the specific update version that they have to update to. If that option seems like more work than its worth, or if you’re not sure which version to download and want to be safe – simply uninstall Adobe Flash Player, and re-install the Player.

Members of the team that identified the security flaw to begin with noted that they “considered the possibility that maybe the latest patch prevented the exploit from working and the root cause of the vulnerability was still unfixed.” After reaching out to Adobe the team noted that “they confirmed our theory and released an out-of-band update” to further solidify the Flash Player moving forward, and to allow its users to have actual security – instead of just perceived security – which is what a solution that only would address the execution of a flaw – rather than fixing the true root cause of the flaw.

Some critics of Adobe have gone as far as to say “Try uninstalling Flash to see if you can live without it. As this incident reveals, Flash is popular with crooks, who put plenty of effort into working out how to exploit it.”

Source: The Hoop News

A note from Cloudeight:  Be careful installing Adobe Flash Player. Many times it will try to install something other than flash player – usually the PUP called Ask Toolbar. You can un-check this during installation of Flash Player – so please pay attention during the installation so you don’t end up with PUPs or malware on your computer. Yes we know it’s hard to believe that a multi-billion dollar company would need to stoop to this level to make a few extra bucks – but unfortunately they do. The same is true of Java. You have to be very careful who you trust these days.