Mozilla temporarily disables Flash Player interactivity within Firefox, cites recently discovered exploits

If you haven’t updated your version of Adobe Flash Player lately, now might be the time to do it.

The developers at Mozilla, having noticed that the staff at Hacking Team had three working exploits for Adobe Flash, decided to block all versions of the Flash Player plugin up to version 18.0.0.203 on Windows. Mozilla said Flash would remain on the Firefox blocklist until Adobe fixes all known vulnerabilities.

Since the announcement, Adobe appears to have updated its Flash player to version 18.0.0.209, which is not blocked.

Earlier in July, hackers breached the systems of Italy-based Hacking Team and published 400GB worth of the company’s data online. Among that data were the Flash exploits as well as other previously unknown exploits in Windows and the Linux.

The exploit comes at a time when many have debated why Adobe Flash Player is still around. The program, despite its functionality, has long been seen as riddled with vulnerabilities and prone to exploitation.

Interestingly, Google’s Chrome, for example, has not disabled its integrated Flash plugin that remained at version 18.0.0.203. However, Google does limit Flash’s interaction with the rest of the browser via a security sandbox.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

Via Macworld