By Sam Oliver
Thursday, September 03, 2009, 05:20 am PT (08:20 am ET)
Anyone else noticed huge speed decrease of Adobe Flash player 10,0,32,18 in SL. In Leopard that version was ok, only ok comparing it to windows. Safari 5.1.7 for OS X Lion, Safari 5.1.7 for OS X Snow Leopard, and Leopard Security Update 2012-003 disable out-of-date versions of Adobe Flash Player. Out-of-date versions of Adobe Flash Player do not include the latest security updates and will be disabled to help keep your Mac secure.
Safari 5.1.7 for OS X Lion, Safari 5.1.7 for OS X Snow Leopard, and Leopard Security Update 2012-003 disable out-of-date versions of Adobe Flash Player. Out-of-date versions of Adobe Flash Player do not include the latest security updates and will be disabled to help keep your Mac secure. Firefox, Google Chrome. Adobe® Flash® Player 10.3. Mac No Adobe Connect Add-in support for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). That type of connection during a Connect session.
The Flash player snafu comes as Apple has sought to build more protection into its OS, adding basic detection into Snow Leopard of two Trojan Horse programs called 'RSPlug.a' and 'Iservice'. It took Apple until mid-May, for example, to include Flash Player 10.0.22.87, the version Adobe released in late February, with a Mac OS X 10.5 security upgrade. It's unknown when Apple will ship the first security update for Snow Leopard. Adobe Flash, or simply Flash, refers to both a multimedia authoring program and the Adobe Flash Player, written and distributed by Adobe, that uses vector and raster graphics, a native scripting language called ActionScript and bidirectional streaming of video and audio.
While Snow Leopard makes a number of improvements to Apple's Mac OS X machines, for those who have kept Adobe Flash up to date, installing the new operating system will reportedly downgrade the software.According to antivirus company Sophos, Snow Leopard installs version 10.0.23.1 of Flash for Mac, a security downgrade from the most up-to-date version, 10.0.32.18. Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley said the change is made without prompting the user. He called the move 'pretty bad.'
'I realize how much malware is out there,' he said. 'But after upgrading to Snow Leopard, when I went to Adobe's Web site, what it actually told me was I had actually downgraded. I was no longer running the latest version of Adobe Flash.'
As hackers have targeted Adobe's Flash player for browser-based vulnerabilities, the company has responded, like Microsoft, by releasing regular security updates for its software. Users can check what version number they're running and download updates at Adobe's Web site.
'Mac users who have been diligent enough to keep their security up-to-date do not deserve to be silently downgraded,' Cluley said. 'We know that hackers keep finding security holes in Adobe's code - and that's deeply concerning because it is so widely used by many Internet users, whether on Mac or PC.'
In an effort to beef up security protection, Apple included limited malware protection in its latest operating system. Though the feature only scans files for two Trojans out of the box, the basic defender could be upgraded over time to protect against other potential threats.
Apple’s latest Mac OS X Snow Leopard upgrade may be getting good feedback and offer a host of new features such as QuickTime X, but it also comes with a security risk in the form of an out-of-date Flash player. You may think that’s just a problem for those who don’t keep their Flash version bang up to date, but if you have the latest Flash on your Mac; Snow Leopard will downgrade it automatically to an older, vulnerable version.
All Snow Leopard users need to be aware of this as it requires you immediately update Flash once Snow Leopard has finished installing. If you don’t then your machine will be vulnerable due to a number of fixes applied by Adobe in the last Flash update they won’t have. As you can see in Graham’s video above the version you should be running is 10.0.23.18 where as you will be running 10.0.23.1. Adobe has also blogged about this with David Lenoe posting:
The initial release of Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) includes an earlier version of Adobe Flash Player than what is available from Adobe.com. We recommend all users update to the latest, most secure version of Flash Player (10.0.32.18) — which supports Snow Leopard and is available for download from http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer
Read more at Graham Cluley’s Sophos blog
Matthew’s Opinion
The way to have stopped this from happening was for Apple to add an update check at the end of the installation procedure for Snow Leopard. Even if the discs shipped with the most current version of Flash tomorrow that could be out of date meaning this was going to happen anyway eventually. The alternative to an update check would be to not include Flash as part of the installation then users will either be left to download Flash themselves or be left with whatever Flash version they were already using on the system.
The update process for Flash in general could be handled a lot better by Adobe themselves. Give users a number of ways to automatically check they are up-to-date other than visiting the Adobe website. Why not have a Firefox plug-in, a desktop app, or even an e-mail notification system users can sign up to? Do any of those exist and I just haven’t come across them?
Adobe Flash For Mac Safari
My solution in Windows is using Secunia PSI which automatically checks and informs me when Flash, and a host of other apps, are old.