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The Adobe Flash application is blocked on all Firefox versions at the current time. Mozilla, the developer of the Firefox browser enforced the block because of the recently found bugs in Adobe Flash which are constantly being exploited by cyber thieves.
The bugs were thoroughly presented in a number of documents that were stolen last week from Hacking Team, an Italian security firm. Adobe said that it took the security issues of the Flash application very seriously and was preparing to offer fixes for the bugs. Flash is an application that is generally used on numerous websites for interactive and multimedia elements.
Mozilla said on its support page that its block would stay active until Adobe will release an updated Flash version that will deal with the crucial security problems. Hackers used vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash in order to install harmful software on computers, which allowed them to steal data from them.
The vulnerabilities from the documents stolen from the Italian security firm have been added to exploit kits. These exploit kits are used by a lot of cyber thieves when they come up with campaigns that allow them to take control of other people’s computers.
Mozilla also advised people on how to adjust the settings in Firefox so that Flash would run only with the user’s permission rather than constantly. It also said that people should only allow Flash to be active on just the sites that they completely trust. A research conducted by analysis companies which monitor the market share of browsers named Firefox the third most popular browser.
Mozilla’s block comes just shortly after Alex Stamos, the security chief at Facebook said that Adobe should kill off Flash. He tweeted that it is about time that Adobe kill Flash and to ask browsers to do the same. He later said that Adobe should set a date in order for everyone to prepare and plan for the day Flash will no longer work.
Flash and other applications from Adobe are commonly found among the top 10 programs favored by hackers who wish to compromise and steal data from computers because of the fact that these applications are used on so many platforms and devices.
Adobe already started to fix one of the vulnerabilities discovered in the documents stolen by the hackers from Hacking Team. However, the company said it is still working on two other bugs but it claimed that patches for the bugs should be launched sometime this week.
Image Source: etilize.com
