Adobe to patch critical Flash flaw on Thursday

Adobe has been forced to issue a security patch for Flash a month ahead of its planned cycle.

Adobe plans to fix critical security vulnerabilities in Flash on Thursday rather than waiting for the patch cycle date of 13 July. The firm is also bringing forward the date to issue patches for similar problems with Reader and Acrobat on 29 June.

Brad Arkin of the Adobe Secure Software Engineering Team blogged that it was the only option available for the software company.

"Two patches within three weeks would have incurred too much churn and patch management overhead on our users, in particular for customers with large managed environments," he said.

Earlier this week, Adobe warned of a 'critical' vulnerability in its Flash Player, Adobe Reader and Acrobat software. The company had to issue a security advisory, saying the issue affected Adobe Flash Player 10.0.45.2 and earlier for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris operating systems.

Adobe confirmed that the vulnerability is already being exploited, but said that the Flash Player 10.1 Release Candidate does not appear to be vulnerable. Hackers could use the Adobe vulnerability to launch malware attacks.

Arkin also said that the out-of-cycle patches had affected the allotted schedule for updates to Adobe Download Centre.

"Given the accelerated release of the next quarterly update, we are working to also pull in the schedule for posting the new installers. However, we do not yet have a confirmed date to announce," he said.