Snow Leopard Installation Downgrades Flash Player to Vulnerable Version

Antivirus firm Sophos reports that Mac OS X Snow Leopard ships with an outdated version of Flash Player that contains several security vulnerabilities patched in the most recent version of Flash Player that was released by Adobe on July 30th. Importantly, an upgrade installation of Snow Leopard over an existing Leopard installation containing an up-to-date Flash Player downgrades Flash to the earlier version with no warning to the user that it has done so.

Unfortunately during the course of that update (and unknown to you) Apple downgraded your installation of Flash to an earlier version (version 10.0.23.1), which is known not to be secure and is not patched against various security vulnerabilities.

The version you should be running is the latest version of Flash Player for Mac - 10.0.32.18.

Mac users are not informed that Snow Leopard has downgraded their version of Flash without permission, and that they are now exposed to a raft of potential attacks and exploits which have been targeted on Adobe's software in recent months.

The report urges users to double check their Flash Player version and upgrade to version 10.0.32.18 if necessary in order to be sure that they have up-to-date protection against security threats.