Apple Blocks Older Adobe Flash Versions In Safari
It would appear that, regardless of browser choice, there’s a plugin to cause problems. Years ago the primary culprits would have been toolbars, but now it’s the turn of Oracle’s Java and Adobe Flash Player. If you use either, you’ll notice frequent updates to protect against vulnerabilities.
While Adobe has already fixed the flaws being exploited, Apple instituted the plug-in-blocking feature in its Safari web browser to safeguard users who may not have downloaded the latest patches. The change affects Macs running OS X Mountain Lion, Lion, and Snow Leopard.
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From Apple’s support document:
To help protect users from a recent vulnerability, Apple has updated the web plug-in-blocking mechanism to disable older versions of the web plug-in: Adobe Flash Player.
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Users who have not yet downloaded the most recent version of Flash, designated as version 11.6.602.171, will see a “Blocked Plug-in” alert in Safari. Selecting the prompt will bring up a pop-up window containing a link to download and install the most up-to-date version of Adobe’s software.
Apple is making this work through OS X’s inbuilt Xprotect malware scanner; maybe not an orthodox method, but it’s getting results for the company, driving down consumer problems simultaneously. Not everyone knows about Xprotect, and information about it is thin on the ground, but it certainly seems to be flagging outdated software effectively.
Earlier, Adobe rolled out an update to address three vulnerabilities in Flash, two of which supposedly targeted Mozilla’s Firefox browser.
[Neowin]
