Adobe Patches ‘PWN To OWN’ Bug in Flash Player

Adobe Systems Tuesday plugged the Flash Player hole used by a hacker two weeks ago to take down a Windows Vista machine and claim a $5,000 prize in the “PWN To OWN” exploit challenge.

Adobe’s update to Flash Player — the popular program and browser plug-in used to view online content — patched seven vulnerabilities, including several that could be used by attackers to hijack machines running the flawed software. Among the seven was the one used to break into a Fujitsu notebook during the hacker contest sponsored by 3Com’s TippingPoint, which operates a bug bounty program called Zero Day Initiative.

Last week, Adobe claimed it had known about the Flash bug before it was used by Shane Macaulay of Security Objectives to hack one of the laptops up for grabs at CanSecWest, and would add a fix for it to a previously scheduled update this month.

Adobe had announced the April update about four weeks ago, but had left the timeline vague, saying only that it would refresh Flash sometime during the month.

The majority of the patches applied to Flash Player quashed bugs in how the software handled .swf files, the proprietary Shockwave Flash format. One of the .swf vulnerabilities had been reported to Adobe back in December 2007 by Google researcher Rich Cannings, who pointed out the format could be used to launch cross-site scripting attacks, which are commonly deployed by identity thieves and phishers.

Earlier, Adobe had issued updates to its Web developer tools that crank out .swf files, and told Web operators and site designers to make changes to their pages before it released yesterday’s end-user update. If they didn’t get rid of the older .swf files, they risked users being unable to access Flash content on their sites, Adobe warned.

Adobe Rolls out Media Player With Video Content

Adobe Systems debuted a new media playing software, Adobe Media Player 1.0 (AMP) along with online programming instructional video content on how to use the company’s products, it said Wednesday.

The move makes Adobe the latest player to get into the online video space, offering not only software that rivals Apple’s Quicktime and Microsoft’s Windows Media Player, but also video content such as episodes of “CSI: Miami” and “CSI: New York,” along with other feature programming and music videos.

Based on Adobe’s Flash technology, Adobe Media Player contains both content creation and playback components, and is available for Windows and Mac.

Adobe Media Player may be downloaded for free at http://www.adobe.com/products/mediaplayer/. Pricing information for the video content publishing software was not immediately available.

Additionally, Adobe TV material can be viewed at http://tv.adobe.com. All of the instructional videos on the site were created using only Adobe software for the relevant components, the company said.

Adobe Unveils Free Web-based Photoshop

The long-awaited, Web-based and free version of Adobe Photoshop is now available as a beta, Adobe announced Thursday.

Photoshop Express allows users to store up to 2GB of images, make edits to their photos, and share them, all online.

It is a way for Adobe to compete with free applications like Google’s Picasa, which have emerged over the last few years.

Since it’s to be used by consumers, the company has put a lot of effort on ease-of-use. In a few clicks, users will be able to make standard edits, such as removing blemishes and red-eye, converting to black and white, cropping and resizing. No experience is required, Adobe said.

Users will also be able to integrate with social networking sites like Facebook.

Photoshop Express works with all major browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari, Adobe said. It requires an Internet connection and Flash Player 9 to work.

The tool is based on Flex, Adobes cross-browser plug-in technology for multimedia.

At first, Photoshop Express is available only to U.S. residents and only in English. Users may experience slow performance if accessed outside of the US, Adobe warned. Future plans include availability in other languages and countries.

This isn’t Adobe’s first foray into Web-based services. Adobe announced the availability of Premiere Express, an online video editing available on partner sites such as MTV and Photobucket, early last year.