14 DAY TRIAL // Adobe Flash Player has been one of the software solutions most often found responsible for exposing users’ computers due to a significant number of vulnerabilities discovered every month.
This made many people claim that it’ll certainly be a cold day in hell when Adobe skips a month and doesn’t release any security fixes for Flash Player. But as it turns out, someone needed the winter coat this past Patch Tuesday.
Adobe hasn’t shipped Flash Player security updates on this month’s Patch Tuesday – this term refers to the second Tuesday of each month, which is being used by a number of software companies, including Microsoft and Adobe, to release security updates for their software.
Not the first month without security updates
Adobe has decided to marry its security rollout to Microsoft’s, especially because Flash Player comes bundled with Windows as part of Internet Explorer and Edge browser (in Windows 10).
This month, however, Adobe has taken everyone by surprise, and even though an updated Flash Player version was indeed released, no security fixes were included. Instead, there were several bug fixes and improvements, and Adobe says that users should still install the new build as soon as possible.
Adobe plans to discontinue Flash Player by the end of 2020, so some speculate that the reduced security patching pace has been impacted by the company switching focus to other products. While there’s no official statement in this regard, such a strategy could be a risky decision that would in the end impact user security, especially if Adobe spends less time hunting down vulnerabilities.
And yet, this isn’t the first time when Adobe actually skips a Patch Tuesday with no security fixes for Flash Player. The last time it happened was in July 2012, which means that Flash Player users have been getting used to receiving security updates for this buggy piece of software for the past 5 years.