Apple Forces Users to Upgrade to Newest Adobe Flash Player to Patch Vulnerabilities

Apple yesterday posted a new support document and sent an email to its security mailing list noting that it is now requiring all OS X users to upgrade to the latest version of the Adobe Flash Player plug-in for Safari to address potential security vulnerabilities.

The company is blocking all older versions Adobe Flash Player prior to 16.0.0.305, and users with an out-of-date version of the plug-in will see messages like "Blocked plug-in" or "Flash out-of-date" when attempting to view Flash content within Safari before updating to the newest version.

flashoutofdate
For users who are on systems that are not able to run Flash Player 16, there is an update to Flash Player 13 (13.0.0.269) that addresses the latest vulnerabilities.

APPLE-SA-2015-02-05-1 OS X: Flash Player plug-in blocked

Due to security issues in older versions, Apple has updated the web plug-in blocking mechanism to disable all versions prior to Flash Player 16.0.0.305 and 13.0.0.269.

The 16.0.0.305 and 13.0.0.269 updates were released by Adobe on February 5 to fix a zero-day vulnerability that was being exploited by hackers against Windows machines.

Tag: Adobe Flash Player

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Top Rated Comments

Number 41

120 months ago

I can't wait until Flash finally goes away for good.

Score: 36 Votes (Like | Disagree)

HiRez

I think I updated Flash three times now in the last week. Such a clunky and annoying way of doing it.

It's incredibly annoying, I swear it asks about 10X per month to update and the whole process sucks. And it just nags you every time until you drop everything and do it (pretty much requiring you to close down every running app for every user account), or a bunch of web sites just stop working. And if you have 3 Macs like I do you go through it that many more times.

Die, Flash, DIE!!

Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)

CrickettGrrrl

I removed Adobe Flash & Reader off all the computers in the house yesterday. Felt good, like having clean closets.

Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Gav2k

I don't have flash installed any more!

noisycats

GD I hate flash! Just die already.

SockRolid

Yup. Flash continues to suck.

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