{"id":85,"date":"2013-01-13T15:56:05","date_gmt":"2013-01-13T20:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yourmacexpert.com\/blog\/?p=85"},"modified":"2013-01-13T16:14:29","modified_gmt":"2013-01-13T21:14:29","slug":"keeping-your-mac-secure-java-flash-and-acrobat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yourmacexpert.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/13\/keeping-your-mac-secure-java-flash-and-acrobat\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping your Mac secure: Java, Flash and Acrobat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week we learned about a new <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zero-day_attack\">zero-day attack<\/a> targeting Java. The attack targets Java on all platforms, making both Mac &amp; Windows users vulnerable. (Note: Java is\u00a0<em>not<\/em> JavaScript ((Despite their similar names, they are two different and unrelated things. <strong>JavaScript is fine<\/strong>; it&#8217;s Java about which you should worry.<\/p>\n<p>JavaScript is found on a huge number of websites (including this one). It&#8217;s generally considered safe, and I don&#8217;t recommend turning it off. In contrast, Java is sparsely used..)))<\/p>\n<p>According to the Symantec&#8217;s 2011 Internet Security Threat Report, just three browser plugins accounted for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.symantec.com\/threatreport\/topic.jsp?id=vulnerability_trends&amp;aid=web_browser_plug_in_vulnerabilities\">59% of all malware attacks<\/a> using browser plugins.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Oracle Java plugin: 20%<\/li>\n<li>Adobe Acrobat plugin: 19%<\/li>\n<li>Adobe Flash plugin: 20%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1>Most Mac users don&#8217;t need any of those\u00a0plugins!<\/h1>\n<p>Java is used on very few websites.\u00a0None of the websites I visit regularly require it, and unless you&#8217;re sure you need it, I strongly suggest turning it off, if not removing it completely from your computer, be it Mac or Windows.<\/p>\n<p>OS X has PDF support built-in, so you don&#8217;t need the Adobe plugin.<\/p>\n<p>Flash is commonly used on the web, and most users don&#8217;t want to give up Flash entirely. I uninstalled the Flash plugin, meaning that I don&#8217;t see any Flash content in Safari, my preferred browser. On those occasions when I need to view Flash content, my\u00a0workaround is to use the Chrome browser, which has Flash built-in. Since Chrome is a self-updating app, it will auto-install new versions of Flash as Adobe finds and fixes security exploits.<\/p>\n<p>Since I prefer Safari, I&#8217;ve installed a Safari extension called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.relaxedapps.com\/eject\/\">Eject to Flash<\/a>. Now when I come across a web page with Flash content, I just press \u2318-E, and whatever page I&#8217;m viewing in Safari is automatically loaded in Chrome.<\/p>\n<p>If your preferred browser is Chrome, then just uninstall Flash; don&#8217;t worry, it will keep working in Chrome.<\/p>\n<p>You can check to see if the Flash plugin is installed by clicking <a href=\"http:\/\/helpx.adobe.com\/flash-player\/kb\/uninstall-flash-player-mac-os.html\">this link<\/a>. That page also has \u00a0instructions for uninstalling Flash. (Note: Don&#8217;t use Chrome when you check that page, since it will always show Flash as being installed when using Chrome.)<\/p>\n<p>You can check to see if Java is installed by clicking <a href=\"http:\/\/www.java.com\/en\/download\/testjava.jsp\">this link<\/a>. If it says &#8220;Your Java is working,&#8221; then you have Java installed. Note that it may falsely report &#8220;<b>An old version of Java has been detected on your system.&#8221; If you see that message, look for this text, and click on the link on that page: &#8220;<\/b>Skip installation of the current version and test the currently installed version of Java<b>&#8220;<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Instructions for uninstalling Java on a Mac can be found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.java.com\/en\/download\/help\/mac_uninstall_java.xml\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Addendum for iOS users: You don&#8217;t need to worry about this, because Java and Flash aren&#8217;t (and cannot be) installed on iOS devices like the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week we learned about a new zero-day attack targeting Java. The attack targets Java on all platforms, making both Mac &amp; Windows users vulnerable. (Note: Java is\u00a0not JavaScript ((Despite their similar names, they are two different and unrelated things. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.yourmacexpert.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/13\/keeping-your-mac-secure-java-flash-and-acrobat\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2JgYQ-1n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yourmacexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yourmacexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yourmacexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yourmacexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yourmacexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.yourmacexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95,"href":"http:\/\/www.yourmacexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/95"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yourmacexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yourmacexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yourmacexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}