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I’m guessing there’s a greater than first rate probability that you simply’ve already heard about this, however that is such a nasty one I assumed I’d simply make certain: The appropriately-named Hacking Crew was hacked earlier this week, and within the 400 gigs of information stolen from them was a beforehand unknown 0-day Flash exploit. The exploit permits web pages to execute arbitrary code on weak machines.
The Hacking Crew makes a residing promoting instruments that enable their shoppers, primarily governments and regulation enforcement, to surveil web customers and listen in on encrypted web site visitors. An essential a part of their service is amassing unknown exploits and holding them a secret in order that they don’t get patched, and may proceed to be exploited.
Flash will get up to date rather a lot, typically for safety functions. What often occurs is a safety agency, or a hacker in search of a bounty, or Adobe itself will discover a vulnerability, and the Flash crew will quietly patch their software program earlier than the exploit turns into broadly identified. This time, the exploit is already on the market, and is shortly making its means into malware instruments.
So, I assume you’re already multi-tasking and disabling Flash in your browsers. (Right here’s the best way to disable Flash in Chrome. And Safari. And Firefox. And IE.)
And now it’s best to go patch Flash.