Flash Vulnerabilities,Patches,The Psychology of feeling Safe,and how that feeling may be a curse:
I recently became interested in attempting to analyse just how big a part the "psychology" of feeling safe plays when it comes to our faith in Flash updates/patches,and the (probably unjustifiable) feeling of safety that may be experienced by a user after installing a released update/patch "immediately" on its release..
A few months ago I was reading an article (Apologies for not remembering where) that stated that in 2015 an average of approx 25 Flash vulnerabilities were found each Month,and that it was not unusual for vulnerabilities to not be fixed in the update/patch that followed the initial detection of them..
This led me to thinking.....Taking these figures into account,Logic suggests that a user is almost as vulnerable immediately after installing the update as they were immediately prior to its installation,and that the difference between how safe they feel having installed the update in comparison to before may be wholly disproportionate to the reality of the situation. Interestingly,this "trick of the mind" could affect users across the full spectrum of experience/knowledge levels as it appears to be hardwired into the subconscious mind rather than be at the mercy of conscious reasoning.
The Irony of this is that an experienced user will often be appalled by a novice's lack of any security settings/software,whereas the novice felt safe.
This suggests that (not just for flash but in general) the default is for a person to feel safe until such a time that additional information leads them to question this view.
Having reached this conclusion I began to contemplate whether that in addition to the knowledge,and logic already recommended to be a users tools for computer security it may be beneficial to have a default mentality of feeling unsafe.
If all users from Basic to Advanced experienced levels never felt safe unjustifiably,provided that they acted on those concerns there is a good chance that security breaches across the entire spectrum could decrease as a result.
Don't get me wrong.I'm not necessarily suggesting that people should not update flash (or their OS), only that they try to fight the false feeling of safety that comes from doing it,until it becomes second nature.