PC World reports in its October 2006 edition that Adobe has just patched a “critical bug” in the Macromedia Flash Player. If you were to simply visit a booby-trapped site, you’d be hit. According to PC World:

Exploitation of the flaw could leave your PC completely compromised via memory corruption, according to security researcher Fortinet. When you visit a Web site that contains a Flash movie (an .swf file), Flash Player automatically loads on your PC and plays the file.

If you haven’t yet, this is a good time to upgrade to Adobe Flash Player 9.0. The upgrade is free, and looks like the player has safely arrived, out of beta.