WTF?

[Mr_Hyde712]

I would really like to know why i keep getting this update notification for the flash player.When i have installed 12+ times.Including today just got done uninstalling then downloaded it AGAIN and installed it AGAIN.And as soon as it finished installing and i go back on to the inter net.BANG another update notification for this retarded program.I would REALLY like to know what's going on and why this keeps happening.If it were not for the fact that most of my games you this program i would have deleted it and told everyone i know to avoid adobe like the PLAGUE.

[pwillener]

If you have the latest Flash Player 15.0.0.189 installed, then most likely that "update notification" is a fake (malware).  Can you post a screenshot of it?

Also, http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1195540

[Mr_Hyde712]

Download Flash Player Couldn't get a screen shot but copied the link.

[pwillener]

That site has nothing to do with Adobe!  Download Flash Player only from Adobe.com or Macromedia.com

If you get pop-ups leading to that site, then you need to check your system for malware.

[pwillener]

I did a WHOIS on that domain softwarecentr.com: it's registered by a Russian company!

[jeromiec83223024]

This sounds a lot like The Moon worm:

'The Moon' worm infects Linksys routers | Computerworld

It affected (and continues to affect) a lot of older home routers.  If you haven't updated your router's firmware recently, I'd recommend power-cycling the router (this should clear out the worm temporarily), then updating the router's firmware following the manufacturer's instructions.

If you installed software based on the prompts you saw, you probably installed malware on your machine and not an authentic Flash Player distributable.  That's problematic.  Depending on your level of paranoia, your options range from running some AntiVirus/AntiMalware stuff to just blowing everything away and reinstalling from scratch.  If it was my personal machine, I would do the latter.

Anyway, sorry you got tricked by this.  Flash Player is super popular (98% of internet-connected computers have it), so it's a good target for malware developers that want to pretend to be something legitimate that everyone needs.

Also, if you have a machine that you haven't compromised, I would recommend doing the router updates and anything else on that one, until you deal with the malware infection on the other.  Better to be safe than sorry in that regard.

Finally, always download software from the vendor's website.  Don't click though on links or emails to update installers unless you're 100% sure that they're legit.  For Flash Player, you can always go to http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer to get the latest update.