Apple's Snow Leopard patches include outdated Flash Player fix
Adobe is suggesting that users download the newest version of Flash from Adobe's site as Apple is several iterations behind
But in another example of the tension between the two companies -- sparked by Apple CEO Steve Jobs' rejection of Flash as slow, buggy and obsolete -- Adobe immediately countered by noting that Apple's Flash fixes were already outdated.
[ Check out InfoWorld's peace plan for Apple and Flash. | Discover the key Mac and Apple tech trends for business users. Read InfoWorld's Technology: Mac newsletter. ] "10.6.4 update for Mac OS X includes Flash Player, but not the latest version," said Brad Arkin, Adobe's director of security and privacy, in a message on Twitter Tuesday shortly after Apple issued the security and performance update. Others at Adobe chimed in yesterday that Apple shipped the outdated Flash Player 10.0.45.2 with Mac OS X 10.6.4, and like Arkin, urged Mac users to download a newer edition directly from Adobe's site. Adobe patched a pair of bugs in Flash Player 10.0.45.2 for Mac and Windows in February 2010. The newest edition of the popular media player is 10.1.53.64, a 32-patch update Adobe shipped June 10, in part to fix a zero-day flaw that hackers have been exploiting since earlier this month. It's not unusual for Apple to lag behind Adobe in releasing Flash Player patches to its users. Apple, unlike Microsoft, handles the distribution of Flash Player updates for its users, bundling them into its OS updates. This was only the second time that Adobe has called out Apple over including an outdated version of Flash Player with Mac OS X, according to reviews of Adobe's security blog. The first time was last September, when Adobe noted that Apple had shipped an older, vulnerable edition of Flash Player with Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, when that OS debuted in August 2009. Security researchers took Apple to task for bundling an old version of Adobe's software with Snow Leopard, and for "downgrading" newer editions to the outdated software. Apple refreshed Snow Leopard two weeks later to include a then-up-to-date copy of Flash. This time, Mac users who manually updated Flash Player to version 10.1.53.64 since last week need not take any further action, Arkin said in a follow-up message on Twitter. "[Mac OS X] 10.6.4 doesn't appear to downgrade users that had previously updated to Flash Player 10.1.53.64, so users don't have to reapply the update," Arkin said yesterday.
AT&T reportedly bungles handling of private data, again
When some users log in to their AT&T accounts to pre-order the iPhone 4 they are being given access to the account info of other people This hasn't been AT&T's month. First, security researchers found a loophole in the company's Website that could be used to reveal email addresses for tens of thousands of Apple iPad customers. Now, some users are reporting that when they log in to their AT&T accounts to pre-order the iPhone 4 they are apparently given access to the account information of other people. "This is how it happens: A customer tries to log into their AT&T account to order a new iPhone 4 upgrade. Despite entering their username and password, the AT&T system would take them to another user account," reported gadget blog Gizmodo, which broke the news. [ iPhone 4 pre-orders were responsible for bringing down Apple's online store. | Get insight on the latest tech business trends with InfoWorld's Tech's Bottom Line blog. ] Some users said when they refreshed the Web page with the wrong account information, the site returned the correct account information. In a statement sent to Gizmodo, AT&T said it couldn't replicate the problem but noted that reports of the problem indicated some data, such as Social Security numbers and credit card numbers was not disclosed. An AT&T spokesman did not respond to an email request for comment about the report, which came amidst complaints that AT&T's servers weren't prepared to handle a surge in pre-orders for the iPhone 4. On Monday, AT&T apologized for a leak that disclosed email addresses for more than 100,000 iPad customers, blaming hackers. The email addresses were disclosed after a group called Goatse Security discovered that entering a serial number for an iPad SIM card into an application on AT&T's Website would reveal the owner's email address. They wrote an application that would randomly generate serial numbers and submit them to the Website, collecting the email addresses returned by the site. Goatse security sent the email addresses collected from AT&T to Gawker, which first reported the privacy breach.
