Secunia

A heads-up on the Adobe Flash player

The free Flash player from Adobe is one of the most popular pieces of software on the planet. It's a web browser add-on that runs in Windows, Mac OS X and assorted versions of Linux and Unix. A large percentage of web pages include Flash-based content. It's all but guaranteed to be installed on the computer you are reading this on.

There are a few things you need to know about it.

The current version of the Flash player is 9.0.115.0. Older versions suffer from critical security problems, so if you are not using version … Read more

Problems updating the Flash player in Firefox? Here's help

Installing a new version of software should be trivial thing--especially for popular software such as the Adobe Systems' Flash player, which is used by millions of people every day. But no.

For one, the Flash player does not play well with the other kids in the sandbox. That is, trying to remove the currently installed version via the Windows XP Control Panel Add/Remove applet is a waste of time. The first three machines I tried this on resulted in three different outcomes, and the software was not removed on any of the machines. Instead, Adobe has an uninstaller for the Flash player.… Read more

Restricting insecure applications

Back in August I wrote about a free security program for Windows XP called DropMyRights. It comes from a trusted source, requires no maintenance, and incurs no overhead.

DropMyRights works by front-ending an application. To use it with Internet Explorer for example, you make a shortcut to DropMyRights and modify the shortcut to include the full path to the IE executable. When DropMyRights runs, it, in turn, invokes Internet Explorer. But, as the name implies, it first lowers the "rights" for IE. Thus, even if you are logged onto Windows XP as an Administrator, IE will run with … Read more

Scan your programs for security updates with Secunia PSI

Earlier this week, security company Secunia released a beta version of a new, free tool that scans all of your installed applications and analyzes their security patch statuses. The Secunia Personal Software Inspector evaluates all of the installed programs on your computer and compares them to a list of over 4,200 software programs.

After the scan is complete, Secunia PSI will categorize each program as "Up-To-Date" (everything is OK), "Insecure" (you've got an outdated version), or "End-of-Life" (your version is no longer supported). The results table presents the name and version number of your install app; each--when clicked--takes you to a page that gives more information about that program.… Read more