Mozilla Firefox blocked Adobe Flash plugins, software used to play online videos and animation, this week, citing security concerns after learning that hackers may be using a security bug to take control of personal computers.
Mozilla announced it would block all versions of Flash Player up to version 18.0.0.203 on Windows, and keep the software on Firefox's
block list until Adobe made vulnerability fixes, PC World reported.
It appeared Tuesday that Adobe had updated its Flash player to version .209 but it was not clear whether the fixes were completed.
SC Magazine reported that Adobe's security updates included identified vulnerabilities found in recent Hacking Team leaks and other bugs in Acrobat and Reader, along with flaws in Shockwave Player. The Hacking Team has been accused by the computer security community as sellers of unethical surveillance software.
"We're glad Adobe has moved quickly to fix critical vulnerabilities in Flash," Chad Weiner, director of product management with Mozilla, said in a statement emailed to SC Magazine. "The latest Flash update is now enabled by default in Firefox. On Monday, July 13, we disabled Flash by default in Firefox to protect our users from active exploits which were distributing malware."
Firefox support head Mark Schmidt had complained before on social media about the Flash vulnerabilities and malware concerns.
An Adobe spokesman told The Wall Street Journal that Firefox and Google Chrome browsers should update automatically when Flash is updated.
"Because the majority of attacks we are seeing are exploiting software installations that are not up-to-date on the latest security updates, users should update their installations immediately as the best possible defense against potential future attacks," the spokesman said.
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