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Critical security updates released for Adobe Flash and Acrobat/Reader on February 6, 2018

On February 6, 2018 Adobe released security updates for Flash[1] to fix several critical vulnerabilities. ISC strongly recommends that users with Flash that are not configured to auto-update manually update their installations as soon as possible. These vulnerabilities can lead to remote-code execution, and should be remediated as quickly as possible.

Systems managed by ISC's IBM Endpoint Manager ("BigFix") can expect to be patched for this vulnerability shortly. Systems administrators of other endpoint management solutions are strongly encouraged to push this patch to their deployments.

For users in unmanaged environments, ISC strongly recommends configuring the software to use Adobe's automatic update for Flash Player.  Available for both Windows and macOS, this update check can be configured to either alert the user to the availability of an update or to automatically install any available Flash Player update. The settings can be found in these locations:

  • Windows: Click Start > Settings > Control Panel > Flash Player
  • macOS: System Preferences > Flash Player (note: under “Other")

Both Google Chrome (on Windows and macOS) and Internet Explorer 10/11 (on Windows 10/8.x) manage and update their Flash Player instances from within the browser. Windows 7 users of Internet Explorer 10/11 must manually download and install the plug-in for Flash Player. All web browsers should be restarted following the update. Adobe states that, by default, Acrobat Reader should update automatically when updates are available.

To download the latest version of Flash Player manually:
https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

To download the latest version of Acrobat Reader manually:
http://get.adobe.com/reader

For information about these security bulletins:
[1] https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash-player/apsb18-03.html