OREANDA-NEWS. March 14, 2016. An emergency update was released by Adobe Systems on Thursday after 23 loopholes in the software were discovered. The company issued a security advisory explaining that there have been a "limited number of targeted attacks" as one of the loopholes became actively exploited.

Adobe is urging people to install the latest update as quickly as possible, no matter whether they're running Windows, Mac or Linux software.

Not sure whether you have Flash installed or have automatic updates switched on? Adobe has a simple tool that lets you check.

The critical rating assigned to this particular vulnerability means that if it is exploited by hackers, malicious code could be executed and your computer taken over, potentially without you being aware of it. This could be used to spy on you or to steal your data. All it would take for your computer to be affected is for you to be ambushed by a rogue Flash-powered Web page or ad.