Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat are riddled with more security holes than just about any other commercial application available today. Yet another critical vulnerability has been found in all three products, all of which are being actively exploited by malicious attackers and which may allow attackers to remotely control the affected machines (emphasis added):
A critical vulnerability exists in Adobe Flash Player 10.0.45.2 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris operating systems, and the authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX operating systems. This vulnerability (CVE-2010-1297) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat.
An inordinate amount of time is spent patching Adobe related vulnerabilities compared to other products. Even the huge amount of updates Microsoft releases on Patch Tuesday do not compare. At the very least, Microsoft patches are rather easily applied and rarely require multiple installs. On the other hand, Adobe patches often times do not install correctly and require multiple passes.
Do yourself a favor and install Google Chrome, Firefox or Safari – three browsers completely capable of HTML5 video – and uninstall Adobe Flash. YouTube offers HTML5 video to those browsers capable and those users who are interested in not using Flash to play their videos. Unless you play flash-based games chances are you do not need Adobe Flash.
On OS X there is no need for Adobe Acrobat as Preview natively opens PDF files and most applications are capable of creating PDF files without additional software required. There is a host of alternative PDF software for Windows available. Install one of many freeware PDF viewers and remove Adobe Acrobat and/or Adobe Reader.
Once you free yourself from the Adobe shackles you will feel a whole lot safer, and without the added burden of having to constantly update your system due to the frequent vulnerabilities found in the ubiquitous Adobe products.
