ID: IRCNE2012041451
Date: 2012-04-02
According to "techworld", Flash Player 11.2 introduces a new updating mechanism that can be configured to check for and deploy updates in the background automatically, without requiring user interaction. The feature has been in Adobe's plans for a long time and is expected to decrease the number of outdated Flash Player installations that attackers can target.
"The new background updater will provide a better experience for our customers, and it will allow us to more rapidly respond to zero-day attacks," said Peleus Uhley, platform security strategist at Adobe. "This model for updating users is similar to the Google Chrome update experience, and Google has had great success with this approach. We are hoping to have similar success."
Of course, this will only happen after the vast majority of users upgrade to Flash Player 11.2. When Adobe Flash Player 11.2 is installed, users are asked to choose an update method. The available choices are: install updates automatically when available (recommended), notify me when updates are available, and never check for updates (not recommended).
The silent updater will try to contact Adobe's update server every hour until it succeeds. If it receives a valid response from the server that no update is available, it will wait 24 hours before checking again.
For now, the automatic update option is only available for Flash Player on Windows, but Adobe is working on implementing it for Mac versions as well, Uhley said.
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