Third time's the charm? Adobe patches even more critical Flash vulnerabilities

On Tuesday, Adobe released yet another security patch for Flash player, addressing several critical vulnerabilities that would allow attackers to take control of affected computers. The update is for Windows, OSX, and Linux users. It's the fourth critical Flash update since the beginning of the yearâ€"and the third Flash security patch from Adobe in February alone. A total of three serious exploits (CVE-2013-0504, CVE-2013-0643 and CVE-2013-0648) are addressed in this update, which Adobe said are already being used in the wild in targeted attacks. These exploits are designed to trick the user into clicking a link that redirects to a website where the computer is exposed to malicious Flash (SWF) files. Two of the exploits specifically target users of the Firefox browser. These are “zero-day” exploits, meaning there were reports of users being hacked using the vulnerabilities. Adobe recommends Windows and Mac users update to Flash version 11.6.602.171 as soon as possible, either manually from the Adobe website, or via your browser’s own update service. (Chrome and IE 10 users on Windows 8 are updated automatically.) If you download manually, make sure you deselect the default option to download McAfee Security Scan Plus as well. The previous Flash patches this month addressed exploits that were designed to trick the user into opening a Microsoft Word document which contained malicious Flash content, as well as a vulnerability targeting Flash in Firefox and Safari fo