Flash under attack, emergency patch issued

Adobe has issued an emergency fix for Flash to prevent two ongoing malware attacks against the world's most popular Web plug-in.

In an advisory note, Adobe announced the latest release of Flash Player 11.5, which will patch two security zero-day vulnerabilities that are actively being used by hackers and malware writers to spread malware.

While Flash users of Windows and OS X are understood to be focus of the attacks, the release of the unscheduled security fix is also available for Linux users and Android devices. According to Adobe, the OS X exploit targets Safari and Firefox users and delivers malware via malicious Flash content hosted on Web sites. A separate flaw could dupe Windows users into opening Microsoft Word documents as email attachments that contain malicious Flash content.