Sprint today announced the availability of two McAfee security apps for select Android smartphones and tablets. Now in the Sprint Zone in the Android Market, the McAfee Mobile Security and McAfee Family Protection Android Edition promise additional virus protection, parental controls, and the ability to secure information on lost or stolen devices.

McAfee Mobile Security will support both smartphones and tablets. You can get a free trial for seven days, but you'll need to get a $29.99 yearly subscription after that. Features on the app include device location and tracking, backup and restore for contacts and data, remote device access from a computer, remote wipe, continuous protection against malware and viruses, secure Web browsing, and the ability to set a notification alarm and pop-up alert for lost or stolen devices.

The McAfee Family Protection app is available as a free 30-day trial, but a full 12-month subscription is $19.99. For both phones and tablets it will offer Web filtering, uninstall protection, and the option to block other browsers from running and bypassing the app.

Originally posted at Android Atlas

Adobe Flash contains a number of settings for managing hardware such as Web cams and microphones in addition to how Flash stores temporary content on your system. These settings are accessible by right-clicking the Flash content window; however, if you have upgraded your Mac to OS X 10.7 Lion, you may have noticed that these settings seem to be unresponsive and clicking them does nothing, and the only way to navigate the settings is to press the Tab button to select elements, followed by the space bar to activate them.

Adobe today has released an update for Flash player, which specifically addresses this issue in OS X, among also closing 13 security holes where buffer overflows and memory corruption in the handling of media could result in arbitrary code execution. As a result, we recommend that you download and install this latest update for Flash player, especially if you have upgraded your system to OS X Lion.

The latest version of Flash player can be downloaded from Adobe's Flash Player Download site. The update brings the latest release to version 10.3.183.5, and is 6.08MB. Flash player is Intel-only, and should install and run on any Intel-based Mac system (see Adobe's system requirements for full details). If you are experiencing odd behavior with Flash (either before or after this update), then you might consider fully uninstalling the plug-in using Adobe's Flash uninstaller tool before downloading and running the latest installer.

In addition to the Flash update, Adobe has issued updates for Adobe Air and Shockwave Player to tackle similar security issues as were found in Flash player.

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Originally posted at MacFixIt

Microsoft has rolled out a new update for Internet Explorer 9 that fixes a host of different security holes.

Launched yesterday on Microsoft's familiar "Patch Tuesday," the August 2011 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer is a critical one that resolves issues not just in IE9 but in versions 6, 7, and 8 as well, according to a Microsoft blog. The update is available through Windows Update, so IE users who have Windows automatic updates turned on should have already received it.

The patch takes care of five holes in IE that were disclosed in coordination with Microsoft and two others that were publicly revealed. The most serious of the security flaws could let a hacker run code on a remote PC if the user visits a malicious Web page. Microsoft also advises that people who run accounts without administrative rights are generally better protected against these types of exploits.

Beyond patching the security holes, the 21MB update throws in some non-security fixes. One resolves an issue in which IE took a long time to open an e-mail on Outlook's Web App. Another addresses a flaw in IE8 in which the browser may have frozen when opening some pages in Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

Due to the critical nature of the security flaws, Microsoft is recommending that individual users who don't have automatic updates turned on install the update manually as soon as possible. IT administrators will also want to roll out the update to their organizations using their own in-house update tools.

Yesterday's Patch Tuesday was a big one for Microsoft and the third largest of 2011, according to security vendor McAfee. The folks in Redmond rolled out 13 security updates to fix 22 flaws that affected Windows, IE, Microsoft Office, the .Net Framework, and Microsoft Developer Tools.

"Overall this Patch Tuesday is on the large side," Dave Marcus, director of security research and communications at McAfee Labs, said in a statement. "Although there are only two critical patches this month, this update comes after the July patches from Oracle and Apple, and there will be another release of critical patches for Adobe Flash Player [on Tuesday], leaving IT administrators with a full plate this summer."

Marcus advises IT admins to place priority on the IE and Windows updates since their related vulnerabilities could "result in remote code execution attacks and can expose users to drive-by download attacks via the browser."

Originally posted at News - Microsoft