Adobe has issued an emergency patch for a vulnerability in Flash Player that is actively used to infect computers with malware. According to the company the leak is exploited in targeted, but limited attacks in which IE users on Windows 7, Vista and XP are the target and also Firefox users on Windows XP.
The leak, that was reported to Adobe by security company FireEye, allows an attacker to execute random code on a computer. Users can be infected by nothing more than visiting a malicious or hacked website or when an infected advertisement is shown to the user. Adobe urgently advises users to install an update to Flash Player 18.0.0.194 within 72 hours.
Updates can be installed through the automatic update feature and by downloading the update from Adobe.com. In case of Google Chrome and IE10/IE11 on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 the embedded flash player will be updated through the browser. This page shows which version of Adobe Flash is currently installed on the computer.
