For those of us on macs, we may have thought we were immune to nasty attacks--but not anymore. MacinTouch reports that there are attacks in the wild based on vulnerabilities in Flash. More below the fold.
Here is what Adobe says:
A critical vulnerability exists in Adobe Flash Player 10.2.152.33 and earlier versions (Adobe Flash Player 10.2.154.18 and earlier for Chrome users) for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris operating systems, Adobe Flash Player 10.1.106.16 and earlier versions for Android, and the Authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat X (10.0.1) and earlier 10.x and 9.x versions of Reader and Acrobat for Windows and Macintosh operating systems.
This vulnerability (CVE-2011-0609) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. There are reports that this vulnerability is being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks via a Flash (.swf) file embedded in a Microsoft Excel (.xls) file delivered as an email attachment. At this time, Adobe is not aware of attacks targeting Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Adobe Reader X Protected Mode mitigations would prevent an exploit of this kind from executing.
We are in the process of finalizing a fix for the issue and expect to make available an update for Flash Player 10.x and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Solaris and Android, and an update for Adobe Acrobat X (10.0.1) and earlier 10.x and 9.x versions for Windows and Macintosh, Adobe Reader X (10.0.1) for Macintosh, and Adobe Reader 9.4.2 and earlier 9.x versions during the week of March 21, 2011. Because Adobe Reader X Protected Mode would prevent an exploit of this kind from executing, we are currently planning to address this issue in Adobe Reader X for Windows with the next quarterly security update for Adobe Reader, currently scheduled for June 14, 2011.
Right now to disable Flash on OS X, go to: Library/Internet-Plugins. The Flash plugin is there and can be deleted. You will lose the ability to run the videos on this site. If you have a business and you regularly exchange excel files (as I do) you may want to disable Flash until the fix is completed--even though it's not until June.
This is posted as an FYI to others, not as a slam on Flash. But since my computer is also my business I can't afford to have these kinds of problems, so I thought I would post this to alert others here who may have the need to deal with excel files and who have Flash installed.
Oh, and maybe it's time for DKos to think about HTML5 fro video--youtube has done it, and it has none of the problems of Flash.