Adobe pushes emergency Flash fix after researchers find bug that tells you you’re screwed

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Kirsty Styles

Reporter

Kirsty Styles is a journalist who lives in Hackney. She was previously editor at Tech City News and is now a reporter at The Next Web. She l (show all) Kirsty Styles is a journalist who lives in Hackney. She was previously editor at Tech City News and is now a reporter at The Next Web. She loves tech for good, cleantech, edtech, assistive tech, politech (?), diversity in tech.

Adobe’s Flash is notoriously buggy – never good news for its one billion users across Windows, Mac, Chrome and Linux – now the company’s pushed an emergency patch after researchers found what they think is the first talking hack.

The RANSOM_CERBER.A ransomware has been buried in ads on bad websites and when clicked, encrypts all of your data and issues a demand of up to $1,000 to give you your files back.

The slightly bored computer-generated woman, recorded over at Trend Micro, explains:

Attention! Attention! Attention! Your documents, photos, databases and other important files have been encrypted!

Trend Micro says you should never pay cyber ransoms, as this indicates that you would likely do so again in the future, instead making sure to back up important files regularly.

According to Reuters, Adobe has urged Flash users to update the product in order to protect themselves.

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