Adobe Flash To Be Top Hacker Target In 2010

An anonymous reader writes "Adobe Systems' Flash and Acrobat Reader products will become the preferred targets for criminal hackers (PDF) in 2010, surpassing Microsoft Office applications, a security vendor predicted this week. 'Cybercriminals have long picked on Microsoft products due to their popularity. In 2010, we anticipate Adobe software, especially Acrobat Reader and Flash, will take the top spot,' security vendor McAfee said in its '2010 Threat Predictions' report. 'We have absolutely seen an increase in the number of attacks, around Reader in particular and also Flash Player to some extent,' CTO Kevin Lynch told reporters at the Adobe Max conference in October. 'We're working to decrease the amount of time between when we know about a problem and when we release a fix. That used to be a couple of months; now it's within two weeks for critical issues.'"

Comments

Acrobat and Flash

[Enderandrew]

Acrobat and Flash vulnerabilities were two of the biggest issues I saw in 2009, even more than Office vulnerabilities.

For one, Office only seems to hit the enterprise sector, and most enterprise users have at least some security. Office is more likely to be patched by users, and there were fewer vulnerabilities.

Most users don't have the latest version of Acrobat or Flash. They effect home and enterprise users.

Even more alarming, it seems that Flash vulnerabilities are one of the biggest weaknesses on Mac and Linux, where security is an after-thought.

For Windows users, I often recommend they swap Acrobat with a free reader like Sumo or Foxit, which is smaller, faster, and has less vulnerabilities. Sadly, there aren't many GOOD Flash alternatives.

I really hope HTML 5 phases out the popularity of Flash.