As if Adobe needed another nail in the Flash is dead tombstone – a zero-day Flash vulnerability has been identified and announced by Adobe:

A critical vulnerability exists in Adobe Flash Player 10.0.45.2 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris operating systems, and the authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX operating systems. This vulnerability (CVE-2010-1297) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.

There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat.

In other words – if you have a computer, Adobe gave hackers the key and invited them to take over driving.

Apple’s decision to keep Flash of the iPhone & iPad, though controversial, means that their mobile platforms are one of the few mainstream computing platforms free of this issue.

In Steve Jobs’ words:

Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now.

We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

The trend to Web standards and the example of devices like the iPhone and iPad are eroding away at the relevance and ubiquity of Flash. This is going to mean huge changes for everyone involved in Internet media – but at least we can see the changes coming.

Can Adobe clean up its Flash mess while it still matters?