Adobe releasing Flash Player for smartphones, is security an issue?
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Adobe Flash Player, the ubiquitous software for running video and animation on websites, will be available for web browsers on smartphones later this year. But some web security experts are worried Flash could open up a can of worms for smartphone security.
Adobe Systems announced Monday that its Flash Player 10.1 will come out for Windows Mobile, Palm webOS and desktop operating systems later this year, followed by public betas for Google Android and Symbian OS smartphones in early 2010.
Adobe and RIM announced a joint collaboration to bring Flash Player to Blackberry smartphones, but Apple will only make Flash Player available for iPhone developers and through its app store on iTunes.
The announcements mean smartphone users will have an experience similar to desktop web browsers on the mobile web, but security experts said that could present hackers with more opportunities to exploit Flash to potentially hijack phones.
Security holes in older versions of Flash Player have been exploited to take control of PCs and Adobe has been criticized for its slow response to patching vulnerabilities. The company said it has since improved its patching process.
Writing for ZDNet, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes said Monday that Flash is a security "nightmare" and wondered if iPhone users lucked out. "Unless Adobe is planning on beefing up security, this could be one of the worst things to happen to smartphone users," Kingsley-Hughes wrote.
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