Adobe on Tuesday patched seven vulnerabilities in Flash Player, six of them for critical bugs that hackers could use to hijack Windows, Mac or Linux machines.

The company also announced it will stop issuing Flash security updates for some Mac users next year.

In a security advisory published Tuesday, Adobe briefly spelled out the vulnerabilities, using the phrase "could potentially lead to code execution" in six of the descriptions. Like Apple, and unlike Microsoft, Adobe does not assign bugs a severity or threat rating. Vulnerabilities that can be used to introduce malicious code, however, are considered the most serious -- and get the highest rating from vendors such as Microsoft.

Yesterday's update was the first for Flash Player since late July. Although Adobe committed earlier this year to releasing security fixes every three months for its Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat software, Flash Player remains on an ad hoc schedule.

More: http://computerworld.com/s/article/9142021/