Adobe have just released yet another critical update for their Flash Player, which fixes another round of critical vulnerabilities. This time, a total of 18 problems have been addressed, and users are advised to download the new update immediately. According to the company, some of the problems fixed by this update have been quite the serious ones, and can potentially lead to compromised user systems, so the update should not be ignored.
It would appear that more than a dozen vulnerabilities related to arbitrary code execution were present in this version, and this is a problem that has been plaguing Flash since pretty much day one. It’s one of the most popular targets for malicious attackers, as the platform is used by millions of computer users around the world, and yet it’s known for being highly unsecure.
The new update will be handled automatically by Internet Explorer and Chrome (at least for those running Windows 8/8.1), but users of other browsers will need to manually download and install the update, either through Adobe’s official website, or through the built-in automatic update tool. The update has been released on all operating systems simultaneously.
Adobe have reassured users that the vulnerabilities were largely unknown by hackers and have not been used maliciously so far, although this could just mean that attackers have been using the exploit on a smaller scale to avoid tipping off security experts.
Flash has been one of the most problematic elements in the world of browsers, along with Java, as their plugins have been consistently causing issues for developers and security experts, a lot of the time related to serious security problems. Flash in particular has been the subject of heavy criticism and much controversy during its existence, to the point where it’s being phased out from website development.
It’s not just Flash though, as the companies behind all major browsers have decided to unite and get rid of various active content plugins for the sake of security and performance. Future versions of all popular browsers will gradually be phasing out support for Flash, Java, Unity Web Player and various other similar plugins, with the idea being to focus on one unified platform, namely HTML5 and OpenGL for game development. The idea has been met with strong approval, although it will surely be a very challenging transition period, both for developers as well as users.
New versions of Google Chrome already have some plugins disabled by default, and Mozilla are following suit in the development of Firefox as well. It’s not known how long the transition will take, although it’s obvious that a change of this major scale won’t happen overnight.