New Critical Adobe Flash Update Released for Ransomware

[Monroe]

This new update from two days ago sounds important after reading about it ... but then all Adobe Flash Updates always seem to be important.

Adobe patches actively exploited Flash Player vulnerability in 24 flaw fix
The new Flash Player update squashes a bug that hackers have been using to infect computers with ransomware

April 8, 2016

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3053090/security/adobe-fixes-24-vulnerabilities-in-flash-player-including-an-actively-exploited-one.html

Adobe Systems released a security update for Flash Player to fix 24 critical vulnerabilities, including one that hackers have been exploiting to infect computers with ransomware over the past week.

The company advised users Thursday to upgrade to the newly released Flash Player 21.0.0.213 on Windows and Mac and Flash Player 11.2.202.616 on Linux. The Flash Player Extended Support Release was also updated to version 18.0.0.343.

As usual, the Flash Player build bundled with Google Chrome on all platforms, Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer for Windows 10 and IE for Windows 8.1 will be upgraded automatically through the update mechanisms of those browsers.

Twenty-two of the newly patched vulnerabilities can result in remote code execution on users’ computers, one can lead to a security feature bypass and one can be used to bypass the memory layout randomization mitigation that’s supposed to make exploitation harder in general.

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Warning: There’s a major security flaw in Flash and you need to update immediately
By Zach Epstein on Apr 8, 2016

http://bgr.com/2016/04/08/adobe-flash-security-flaw-update/

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before… dozens of times. A very serious security flaw has been discovered in Adobe Flash and millions of users are impacted. The zero-day vulnerability allows hackers to exploit the flaw and crash a user’s system, or even take control of the system and steal private data.

It’s one of the most serious types of flaws out there and in this case the vulnerability is being actively exploited by hackers. In other words, this isn’t some tiny bug discovered by researchers and handled privately with Adobe behind closed doors. Hackers are using the security hole to attack users as you read this — and now Adobe has released an update to patch the flaw.

Here’s what you need to know: All desktop versions of Adobe Flash player are affected, including builds for Windows, OS X and Linux. So basically, if you have a computer you need to install the update.

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