Adobe patches Flash because of ongoing attacks

Adobe on Wednesday unexpectedly pushed an update to its popular Flash Player to address seven vulnerabilities, including one that was being publicly exploited.

The update to version 11.1.102.62 for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris includes a fix for a cross-site scripting flaw that was being used in targeted attacks against users of Internet Explorer on Windows, according to a security bulletin. The bug was being leveraged in emails that tried to lure recipients to click on a link that leads to a malicious website, on which the attackers are able to take actions on the user's behalf.

The other flaws addressed by the update, which were not zero-days, could lead to malicious code execution, the bulletin said.

Wednesday's emergency release from Adobe likely will catch IT administrators off guard, said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at vulnerability management firm nCircle.

"In a perfect world, it would have been nice to get a little advance communication about the zero-day in Flash," he said.

For those organizations that can't update to the current version, Adobe also has made available an update for Flash 10.