---

As we consider the implications of yet another zero-day Flash security issue comes the news that Adobe’s released a 64-bit version of their multimedia middleware. Although this won’t be of help to Android users, which are facing down a pair of critical vulnerabilities, 64-bit does offer some inherent yet limited security advantages over 32-bit. What does this mean for Mac security?

According to Adobe, “Flash Player ‘Square’ preview is version 10.2.161.22. This preview release is adds full, native support for 64-bit web browsers running on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms. Native 64-bit Flash Player will be supported on most systems supported by Flash Player 10.1, including 64-bit editions of Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Mac OS X 10.6, Ubuntu 9.04 or later, versions of RHEL 5, and versions of openSUSE 11.”

Again, this is a preview release so you’ll need to manually update as new versions arrive. Get your copy of Flash Player 10.2.161.22 here.

Are we now more secure?

If you have an Intel Mac (OS X 10.5.8 and up), Safari 5.0.x should run as a 64-bit application by default. Thereupon, with OS X, Safari and now Flash running 64-bit natively, we technically should be more secure, though the practical import seems nebulous.

That is, old exploits written to exploit Flash and/or 32-bit Mac software won’t run anymore. However, to my knowledge, the only active malware out there that targets the Mac are trojans, which rely on the ignorance and/or gullibility of the user to install and run.

None of the trojans rely on Safari or Flash to do their stuff.

Another open question is whether Flash Player 10.2.161.22 directly addresses recently uncovered security vulnerabilities or even if it papers over (potential) exploits by making them incompatible.

That said, it would seem that the rest of us are just as secure or insecure, depending on your perspective, as we were yesterday, though 64-bit will offer some limited protection for down the road…

What’s your take?