The patch, released through version 10.1 of the Flash player is available now from www.adobe.com and there is also a new version of Adobe Air as well.

The company may have managed to shoot itself in the foot with this patch however as you’ll see from the amusing screenshot below, where the news story about the patch in the new version of the Flash Player is accompanied by a picture of Homer Simplson asking “Ooh. They have the Internet on Computers now!”

Okay, so this is a banner advert for an Adobe Air app, but I had to share the irony of the event with you.

The patch fixes a critical vulnerability which could allow your PC to be hijacked remotely and it covers Windows, Mac and Linux users, so everybody should upgrade.  All PC users should upgrade their version of Flash as soon as possible to prevent their PCs being vulnerable to the flaw.

An update for Acrobat and Acrobat reader is due sometime in the next week or so to fix the same vulnerability.

It is no security software for beginners but excellent for advanced users and users who know someone who is able to draw the right conclusions from the security logs that have been generated. Another way to receive fast results would be to use the online script Hijack This logfile analysis. You can paste the logfile into the form field or upload the log from your computer and the script analyzes the logfile of Hijack This automatically.

It uses user input to determine whether something is a potential threat or not. This works most of the time but leads sometimes to unjustified ratings. I installed AV Antivir in a custom directory and the analyzer used this to indicate a possible problem. I think the best way to cope with this situation would be to briefly analyze the elements that could be malicious and decided if that is really the case. To use the above example: I knew that I did install it in that directory and therefor decided that the warning was not justified in this case.

If you are insecure about a certain setting ask in the well frequented support forum or search the internet for clues on the subject. Hijack This has a similar analyze this button build in which takes you to the website of the developer of Hijack This. They display information about everything that was found on your computer and how frequent it was found in other computers.

This could be an indicator for safeness but I would suggest that you perform additional searches to be on the safe side. You can download the newest version of Hijack This from TrendSecure by following the link in the first paragraph.