Yet another Flash exploit revealed

At this point, the Hacking Team leak appears to be a never-ending source for Flash exploits. A third vulnerability was just discovered among the leaked materials. As always, we recommend disabling Flash completely in your browser, or setting up one browser with Flash, to be used only when you have no other choice.

To reduce potential damage, Mozilla has configured Firefox to block all versions of Flash up to version 18.0.0.203. Of course, that won’t help for as-yet unpatched vulnerabilities such as the last two from the Hacking Team leak.

Meanwhile, there’s renewed interest in eliminating Flash from the web completely. YouTube abandoned Flash for an HTML5-based video player recently, and organized campaigns like Occupy Flash are trying to keep the ball rolling by encouraging both users and service providers to stop using Flash. Facebook’s Chief Security Officer wants Adobe to announce the end of Flash.

We’re hoping that Google is working to remove Flash from their advertising infrastructure, since for many users, Flash-based advertisements are their biggest remaining exposure to Flash.

About jrivett

Jeff Rivett has worked with and written about computers since the early 1980s. His first computer was an Apple II+, built by his father and heavily customized. Jeff's writing appeared in Computist Magazine in the 1980s, and he created and sold a game utility (Ultimaker 2, reviewed in the December 1983 Washington Apple Pi Journal) to international markets during the same period. Proceeds from writing, software sales, and contract programming gigs paid his way through university, earning him a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) degree at UWO. Jeff went on to work as a programmer, sysadmin, and manager in various industries. There's more on the About page, and on the Jeff Rivett Consulting site.

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