Flash Offline Installers

Adobe and Java rival each other as the world’s most exploited software, forcing us to swallow vendor-pushed updates for fear of attack.  Flash, .PDF and Java are all edge-facing in a big way; Flash and Java from web sites, and .PDF both via web content and emaul attackments.  Many software applications auto-generate .PDF files send as attachments with generic message text, so the recipient has no “Turing Test” opportunity to exclude malware-automated vs. legitware-automated .PDF coming from “someone they know”.

So with that in mind, you’d expect both vendors to be abjectly apologetic, going out of their way to make it easy for users to download and apply the constant stream of repairs for their defective code.  Which is more or less true for Java, but Adobe is another story – I found this blog post that sums it up best:

http://www.pretentiousname.com/flash_links/index.html

So the quest is on to find offline installers for Adobe Flash and Acrobat Reader, that are:

• Really from Adobe, and not malware fear-bait fakes or trojanized versions
• Actually up to date, and not older versions
• Ideally, are free of unwanted by-catch (Google this, McAfee that, etc.)

With Acrobat Reader, this is fairly easy; you can use Adobe’s FTP site.  But that doesn’t help you with Flash.

I found some links from here to bypass the buggy installer...

http://helpx.adobe.com/content/help/en/flash-player/kb/installation-problems-flash-player-windows.html#main-pars_header

Links from here appear to work...

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html

These links were newest version (as at 22 August 2012)…

http://download.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/licensing/win/install_flash_player_11_plugin.exe

http://download.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/licensing/win/install_flash_player_11_active_x.exe

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_64bit.exe

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/current/support/install_flash_player.exe

…while these were several versions old...

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_32bit.exe

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_ax_32bit.exe

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_64bit.exe

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_ax_64bit.exe

Expect these links to shift around, as Adobe plays the shell game to force us to use their wretched online installers, complete with shoveware that rewards them for our need to fix their junk.