A critical flaw has been discovered that attackers are exploiting, but a patch is on the way.
A new vulnerability has been discovered in the Adobe Flash software allowing an attacker to take control or crash the affected system. The security flaw has been revealed to being actively used on Windows XP and Windows 7 OS’s running any Flash Player version 20.0.0.306 and earlier.
A patch is being developed and could be released as early as Thursday, Adobe stated.
While Flash Player regularly checks for updates, the updater has been known to use system resources and display nag boxes encouraging the user to approve the update. Many users opt to turn off the updater altogether or decline the update, which is what the cyber attackers are counting on. Flash Player runs on hundreds of millions of computers around the world, and has become a common target due to it’s many vulnerabilities.