Adobe Releases Flash Player Update to Patch Security Holes as Apple Blocks Earlier Versions

[akbarali.ch]

Apple needs to stop blocking software. If they want to display a warning, fine. But for people who rely on their computers to do actual work, it isn't acceptable for them to keep disabling software that many people use and need on a daily basis. Inform people of the vulnerability and give them the option of disabling it.

Exactly, not everyone freaks out with security issues, not everyone's computer has nuclear secrets Apple should give clear warning. Let people opt-in or opt-out.
I hate when someone babysits me.

 

[a0me]

Tried to open the download link.
"Your Google Chrome browser already includes Adobe® Flash® Player built-in. Google Chrome will automatically update when new versions of Flash Player are available."

Chrome rocks. It just works.

 

[Tech198]

versions

You can check which version you have on http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about

Good to see Apples "following the leader" ...

 

[smithrh]

Exactly, not everyone freaks out with security issues, not everyone's computer has nuclear secrets Apple should give clear warning. Let people opt-in or opt-out.
I hate when someone babysits me.

You do realize, of course, that the existence of this opt-out capability would then be attacked... Likely rendering the entire process useless for all.

I like what someone else mentioned - it's interesting to see how quickly plugin vendors move when Apple blocks them at the OS level...

 

[gnasher729]

Exactly, not everyone freaks out with security issues, not everyone's computer has nuclear secrets Apple should give clear warning. Let people opt-in or opt-out.
I hate when someone babysits me.

Most people have bank accounts. Most people don't know what to do with warnings. By blocking Flash, Apple made sure that an update happened very, very quickly.

 

[John.B]

If you need flash you can use Firefox or Chrome.

I was on an older XP laptop at work yesterday, and happened to notice that the latest FireFox 18.x update turned off the Flash browser plug-in because it was out of date.

So, while Mozilla might not be tackling this as aggressively as Apple, they are doing it too.

I guess that leaves Google Chrome if/when you "need" to run an insecure Flash version.

 

[tbrinkma]

How long before the next "vulnerability" and apple shuts this one down?

Why the 'scare quotes' around the word vulnerability?

There was a vulnerability, which was being exploited in the wild. Blocking a vulnerable (and exploited) plug-in from running is a good security practice, and it can be easily undone if you really want to.

(It generally takes about 1-2 *hours* after the security update is released before instructions appear online to disable the block.)

 

[HenryDJP]

Apple needs to stop blocking software. If they want to display a warning, fine. But for people who rely on their computers to do actual work, it isn't acceptable for them to keep disabling software that many people use and need on a daily basis. Inform people of the vulnerability and give them the option of disabling it.

Excellent post.....the nerve of Apple, trying to protect their users, especially against Adobe Flash. How dare they.....now go ahead and allow yourself to get burned since you feel the company shouldn't have your bet interest at heart.

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I never hear any problems with Microsoft Silverlight. Is it extremely secure or just nobody uses it or cares?

The part that I highlighted.

 

[musicpaladin]

Why the 'scare quotes' around the word vulnerability?

There was a vulnerability, which was being exploited in the wild. Blocking a vulnerable (and exploited) plug-in from running is a good security practice, and it can be easily undone if you really want to.

(It generally takes about 1-2 *hours* after the security update is released before instructions appear online to disable the block.)

Um.... blocking exploits should be done at the liberty of the administrators, not by the manufacturer. That's the business's decision to make. Not Apple's. If Apple is serious about continuing to claim to serve the Enterprise market (which they have repeatedly shown more and more that they are completely inept at) then they will cease this practice immediately.

In the business world, when you have several thousand workstations on your network, it is unacceptible and impractical to ask an administrator to manually have to disable a block. And for some businesses, 1-2 hours is too long. What if you are in medicine and your medical database uses a Java based client? Someone could die if you lose access to these records for 1-2 hours.

This would NEVER fly on a Microsoft product. If this is what people will have to expect from Apple, then they will not use their products for the Enterprise.

Apple continues to play God and show an arrogance towards the Enterprise about their needs.

 

[HenryDJP]

Um.... blocking exploits should be done at the liberty of the administrators, not by the manufacturer. That's the business's decision to make. Not Apple's. If Apple is serious about continuing to claim to serve the Enterprise market (which they have repeatedly shown more and more that they are completely inept at) then they will cease this practice immediately.

In the business world, when you have several thousand workstations on your network, it is unacceptible and impractical to ask an administrator to manually have to disable a block. And for some businesses, 1-2 hours is too long. What if you are in medicine and your medical database uses a Java based client? Someone could die if you lose access to these records for 1-2 hours.

This would NEVER fly on a Microsoft product.

Are you serious? . OMG. I.T departments (although would love to have reasons to keep their jobs) want as little to do with cleanups of company computers as possible. I know this first hand.

Of course this would never fly on a "Microsoft Product", that's why hackers love to target Windows, because they KNOW Windows over the years has had serious security holes and rather than attempting to block hackers Microsoft has just patched holes. That helps no one.

Funny though, reports last year said Apple's care for security on their systems had dropped. Now they are analyzing software that's trying to be installed on their systems that may/will compromise the user's security/privacy, they find the flaw and then block it. If you find this is poor business then do away with your Macs and stay on Windows since Microsoft does what you want them to do.

 

[subsonix]

This. Although I wasn't working, I did find it annoying that a lot of the websites I visited that needed the adobe plug-in where completely useless because of this block.

A newer version is available, the block affects the old unpatched version, so just go ahead and update Flash and all is fine.

 

[fahlman]

Um.... blocking exploits should be done at the liberty of the administrators, not by the manufacturer. That's the business's decision to make. Not Apple's. If Apple is serious about continuing to claim to serve the Enterprise market (which they have repeatedly shown more and more that they are completely inept at) then they will cease this practice immediately.

In the business world, when you have several thousand workstations on your network, it is unacceptible and impractical to ask an administrator to manually have to disable a block. And for some businesses, 1-2 hours is too long. What if you are in medicine and your medical database uses a Java based client? Someone could die if you lose access to these records for 1-2 hours.

This would NEVER fly on a Microsoft product. If this is what people will have to expect from Apple, then they will not use their products for the Enterprise.

Apple continues to play God and show an arrogance towards the Enterprise about their needs.

You must not be an administrator in the enterprise or you would know that no administrator does anything to thousands of computers manually.

Also, Apple did not block Flash until there was a updated version with this security hole closed.

 

[TouchMint.com]

This is pretty annoying stuff. When this get blocked I cant work from home which means I have to boot to windows to work from home.

 

[MyNameIsDave]

This is pretty annoying stuff. When this get blocked I cant work from home which means I have to boot to windows to work from home.

The block only affects the old version of Flash. If you upgrade Flash, its not blocked and you'll not have to boot into Windows.

 

[TouchMint.com]

The block only affects the old version of Flash. If you upgrade Flash, its not blocked and you'll not have to boot into Windows.

ahh good deal thanks for the heads up!

 

[subsonix]

This is pretty annoying stuff. When this get blocked I cant work from home which means I have to boot to windows to work from home.

Update flash, it takes about a minute, ie less time than booting Windows. Btw, the Windows version of Flash is also affected.

 

[iMikeT]

Great, just great. I don't know how many times I'll have to restart my iMac this week because of OEMs.

 

[MyNameIsDave]

Great, just great. I don't know how many times I'll have to restart my iMac this week because of OEMs.

You don't need to reboot your iMac because of this, you just need to restart Safari after upgrading Flash.

 

[pmhparis]

Good point, though that patent has now expired.

Too bad the patents on H.264 haven't...

Regardless, why all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over H.264 when they turn right around and embrace Flash and MP3? Seems self serving, if not outright hypocritical.

MP3 created the market & so won the war before rivals like OGG & AIFF were born. H.264 was born into a world of roughly equal adversaries: Those who had learned from being forced to use a proprietary format and wanted a truly free video format & those who didn't care or viewed proprietary formats as a revenue source. Roughly equal forces => a relative stalemate and a long war.

Even the most fervent free software proponent recognizes that spending effort on lost causes is unfruitful, thus MP3s are accepted while h.264 is/was not.

 

[GenesisST]

Tired of people on their high horses... (In response to all the "Why does anybody uses Flash anymore...")

I have a 7 year old that likes some little games, which happen to run on flash, once in a while.

Also, I like Bluray, occasionally buy a CD and actual books! It is "iTouch" and not iPod Touch and the galaxy is kind of an iPad...

There! Must have annoyed a good deal of nerds here, so we're even now...

I can now relax...

(That wasn't trolling, just venting... )

 

[lifeinhd]

So how do we get rid of this xprotect file?

 

[subsonix]

MP3 created the market & so won the war before rivals like OGG & AIFF were born.

AIFF is an uncompressed linear PCM format built around the riff format, it's almost identical to WAV apart from byte order. It predates mp3 by decades, if you were thinking of AAC, it's a successor of mp3, an ISO standard and part of the mpeg2 and 4 specs.

 

[JAT]

Anyone using Netflix on Mac or Windows needs Silverlight. There's no Silverlight on TV, iOS devices, Nintendo devices, Android devices, etc.

Hence my first sentence.

 

[Larry-K]

I never hear any problems with Microsoft Silverlight. Is it extremely secure or just nobody uses it or cares?

I don't think anybody cares, my browser disabled it anyway.

 

[ProudLoz]

A newer version is available, the block affects the old unpatched version, so just go ahead and update Flash and all is fine.

I know man, I did that immediately.

The problem was that it never said why the plug-in was disabled. I am however glad that the update was seamless and that I didn't have to close Safari to get it installed like I remember happening before in the past.