14 DAY TRIAL // One of Adobe's applications, Flash Player, is used by two versions of a malicious software in order to infect the computers of Facebook and MySpace social networks users, as we already reported.
Users are taken to certain fake websites that promise to reveal exclusive videos of celebrities or hidden-camera footage showing the users themselves in embarrassing situations. When they try to see the videos, they are informed that they don't have the latest version of Flash Player, which is necessary to watch them. "Your version of Flash player is out of date. Please download this update." reads the message they receive. Should the name of the file that claims to be an update raise no suspicions with the users, codecsetup.exe, the "download" ends with the infection of the computer.
So as to prevent its name from being further associated, in one way or another, with the web-based attacks, Adobe has decided to take action. Therefore, it strongly recommends users not to download products that apparently belong to them from any third party source. "This goes for any piece of software (Reader, Windows Media Player, QuickTime, etc.) - if you get a notice to update, it's not a bad idea to go directly to the site of the software vendor and download the update directly from the source. If the download is from an unfamiliar URL or an IP address, you should be suspicious." says an Adobe warning note.
People can tell if certain installed software that is under Adobe's label is genuine if it comes with a digital certificate that is displayed by Windows every time an update is launched. The "Adobe System, Incorporated" is a verity mark that should not be ignored by users. Adobe indicates 9.0.124.0. as the latest version of the Flash player, so that people can verify what version they have in use before jumping to download an update.
The easiest thing to do before accepting to download software from unofficial sources is to check whether the computer is not already running the latest version of whatever is required, Adobe's recommendation ends.