Mozilla now automatically blocks Flash on the Firefox browser. A message now appears saying that "Flash - the plug-in that enables animation, browser games, and other graphics online - is vulnerable," along with a message that says that Mozilla reserves the right to block software that can compromise the security of the browser, according to The Washington Post.
"Following Adobe's advisory for two critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player 18.0.0.204 [the latest version of Flash] and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, we have disabled Flash by default in Firefox to protect our users from active exploits which are distributing malware," said Mozilla director of product management Chad Weiner, according to Business Insider.
The vulnerabilities in question were revealed after "Hacking Team," an Italian IT company that creates and sells spy software, was infiltrated by a group of hackers earlier this month. The hackers published 400GB of allegedly stolen Team Hacking data on the Internet, including the source code of the company's spy tools and the software vulnerabilities they exploited.
The exploits that were targeted included flaws in the Adobe Flash software, which drew a lot of criticism toward Adobe after it was discovered that the bugs were actively being used by cyber-thieves.
The block is a temporary one and will be lifted once the bugs have been fixed by Adobe. "Adobe is expected to release an update to Flash sometime this week. This new version of Flash will be activated in Firefox by default," Weiner said.
Among the three Flash bugs unearthed in the files stolen from Hacking Team, Adobe has already patched one and updates to fix the other two are expected later this week.
"Adobe takes the security of our products, technologies and our customers very seriously. Adobe employs comprehensive security software engineering practices and processes in building our products and responding to security issues," said Wiebke Lips, senior manager of Adobe's corporate communications, The Register reported.
BIG NEWS!! All versions of Flash are blocked by default in Firefox as of now. https://t.co/4SjVoqKPrR #tech #infosec pic.twitter.com/VRws3L0CBW
— Mark Schmidt (@MarkSchmidty) July 14, 2015
