Adobe Senior Security Director Praises Apple For Latest Safari Update

[Phillip Swanson]

This little bit of praise flew under the radar Wednesday. Brad Arkin, Adobe’s senior director of security, products and services, commended Apple for disabling old Flash Player versions in a recent Safari update.

The older versions of Adobe’s flash player were potentially susceptible to malicious code and other security vulnerabilities.

"We welcome today's initiative by Apple to encourage Mac users to stay up-to-date. Remember: The single most important thing we can do to protect ourselves from the bad guys is to stay up-to-date. A thank you to the security team at Apple for working with us to help protect our mutual customers!" — Arkin

The Safari update (version 5.1.7) automatically disables Flash software older than version 10.1.102.65, which dates back to November of 2010. Users will need to manually reinstate the older software if they want to use legacy players.

While Arkin does praise Apple’s recent update, he also acknowledged Adobe’s lack of support for the Mac platform when it comes to automatic updating tools. Adobe issued a fix last week for a recently discovered Flash exploit and Windows users had the luxury of an automatic fix downloaded in the background on their systems. Mac users on the other hand had to manually install the software.

Arkin did mention that a Mac version of the Flash Player background updater “is currently in beta and will be available very soon.”

A background updater would definitely help the less savvy keep their systems secure, especially when they most likely don't have a clue a security risk exists, let alone there is a fix. Right now though, I just want the 100GB of Adobe software I'm downloading from their servers to finish so I can put this Creative Cloud Membership to use (reviews to come).

Source: MacWorld [via Apple Insider]

[baRRy boRRis]

I'm rocking 5.2. Now that is an update worth praising.

[exNavy]

This is only half a step in the right direction. Safari needs to be designed to only allow installs of the latest version (not just one specific version) to truly protect users. Seems like a waste of Apple's time to release a one-off version. I guess this just goes to show you how buggy Flash is. They release an update to Flash like what, every day? It seems I'm updating flash every time I use my Mac. It's ridiculous. Same with Firefox.

[hitman10]

Why do we even bother with Adobe seriously... **ck flash. And Safari sucks, idk how people say good things. When I open MMI a post will have like 21 comments yet i only see 4 then i open firefox and all 21 comments are there... I click to open a youtube page.. YO MY WHOLE COMPUTER starts to lag an freeze the funs go full speed and the my $3000 POS MACBOOK PRO freezes for 10sec. Not to metion when i click a youtube video i cant click 2min into the video it makes me watch the whole thing or it resets... im legit so ******* sick of safari and my mac.. i call apple support and every time they tell me to reinstall my system.... seriously yor ******* useless and so it your POS internet browers safari.. ps thanks for crashing all those times while i was sending a email or reading a ******* TUT on how to fix this.

[desepticon]

where did you get it?

[Cer0]

Why do we even bother with Adobe seriously... **ck flash. And Safari sucks, idk how people say good things. When I open MMI a post will have like 21 comments yet i only see 4 then i open firefox and all 21 comments are there... I click to open a youtube page.. YO MY WHOLE COMPUTER starts to lag an freeze the funs go full speed and the my $3000 POS MACBOOK PRO freezes for 10sec. Not to metion when i click a youtube video i cant click 2min into the video it makes me watch the whole thing or it resets... im legit so ******* sick of safari and my mac.. i call apple support and every time they tell me to reinstall my system.... seriously yor ******* useless and so it your POS internet browers safari.. ps thanks for crashing all those times while i was sending a email or reading a ******* TUT on how to fix this.

Not sure what is causing you all those issues. I have no issues with youtube or any other issues with sites using Safari. As for the comments thing it is a known bug in VB with how it pushes articles. Sometimes people see it sometimes people don't.

click-to-flash addon is one of those must on a mac because flash has always had horrible support on mac. As this guy even says.