If you don't have an Intel Mac running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or later, you can also download Adobe Flash 10 for PPC Macs and Adobe Flash 9 for Mac OS X 10.1-10.3. Mac users may be surprised that versions of Apple's latest operating system, Snow Leopard, also installs an older version of Adobe System's Flash player, potentially putting them at a higher.
Apple's latest operating system, Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), has been found to ship with an outdated version of Adobe's Flash Player (10.0.23.1). This version of Flash Player contains a vulnerability on Mac machines that could leave your system vulnerable to hackers.
What could be the most distressing thing of all, is when users upgraded from Leopard (10.5) to Snow Leopard (10.6), users found themselves with a downgraded version of Adobe's Flash Player (10.0.23.1). Users who upgraded that had the latest security patches installed of Flash Player (10.0.32.18) found themselves with a vulnerable version installed on their machine.
Snow Leopard appears to have shipped with an outdated version of Flash Player from the 1Q of this year, around the time when Apple had to freeze the code for Snow Leopard. Users with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) are urged to upgrade their copy of Flash Player to 10.0.32.18 or higher immediately.
Adobe has since released a security alert for Snow Leopard on their blog.
Adobe Flash Player For Imac Sierra
Download: the latest version of Flash Player here.
By Sam Oliver
Thursday, September 03, 2009, 05:20 am PT (08:20 am ET)
Adobe Flash Player
While Snow Leopard makes a number of improvements to Apple's Mac OS X machines, for those who have kept Adobe Flash up to date, installing the new operating system will reportedly downgrade the software.According to antivirus company Sophos, Snow Leopard installs version 10.0.23.1 of Flash for Mac, a security downgrade from the most up-to-date version, 10.0.32.18. Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley said the change is made without prompting the user. He called the move 'pretty bad.'
'I realize how much malware is out there,' he said. 'But after upgrading to Snow Leopard, when I went to Adobe's Web site, what it actually told me was I had actually downgraded. I was no longer running the latest version of Adobe Flash.'
As hackers have targeted Adobe's Flash player for browser-based vulnerabilities, the company has responded, like Microsoft, by releasing regular security updates for its software. Users can check what version number they're running and download updates at Adobe's Web site.
'Mac users who have been diligent enough to keep their security up-to-date do not deserve to be silently downgraded,' Cluley said. 'We know that hackers keep finding security holes in Adobe's code - and that's deeply concerning because it is so widely used by many Internet users, whether on Mac or PC.'
In an effort to beef up security protection, Apple included limited malware protection in its latest operating system. Though the feature only scans files for two Trojans out of the box, the basic defender could be upgraded over time to protect against other potential threats.