Did you get that annoying little pop-up from Adobe informing you of an update to its Flash Player? Did you click the ‘cancel’ button? If so, its time to manually update your Flash Player as the update addresses a serious threat.
Adobe Systems Inc issued an emergency update on Thursday to its widely used Flash software for Internet browsers after researchers discovered a security flaw that was being exploited to deliver ransomware to Windows PCs. The software maker urged the more than 1 billion users of Flash on Windows, Mac, Chrome and Linux computers to update the product as quickly as possible after security researchers said the bug was being exploited in “drive-by” attacks that infect computers with ransomware when tainted websites are visited.
Ransomware encrypts data, locking up computers, then demands payments that often range from $200 to $600 to unlock each infected PC. Japanese security software maker Trend Micro Inc said that it had warned Adobe that it had seen attackers exploiting the flaw to infect computers with a type of ransomware known as ‘Cerber‘ as early as March 31. Cerber “has a ‘voice’ tactic that reads aloud the ransom note to create a sense of urgency and stir users to pay.
