Can you get a virus from just running flash player in Google Chrome?

[Skylerbob]

I've seen a lot of articles talking about Flash being easy to hack. I can't tell if they are referring to installing fake versions of Flash, or the real flash player. If I were to run a real version of Flash using Google Chrome, would I be likely to get a virus from it, if I were to come across a sketchy site?

[Test Screen Name]

Adobe fix all known attacks for Flash quickly. But hackers are working hard to find new attacks, and one day they may succeed, with Flash as with Chrome itself, with Windows or Mac OS. All of these products are continually finding and fixing security holes.

It is MUCH easier to just offer fake downloads of Flash and other software to the unwary, though. This is happening non-stop.

See also Zero Day Explolit: Zero-day (computing) - Wikipedia

[Skylerbob]

I'm using Flash for chrome, but I think I have normal flash installed too. If I use the "Adobe Flash Player Install Manager" to install, will I still be able to use the chrome version?

[Robert Mc Dowell]

in 2019 it's not as easy as it was before to carry a virus with Flash. Btw you can get a virus with javascript and html5 without any problem.

[_maria_]

As with other commenters, I'm not sure what you mean by 'normal Flash' and 'real version of Flash'

If you're referring to /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Flash Player Install Manager.app, then running this utility will actually uninstall the non-embedded Flash Player plugins installed on the system.  It will not uninstall Chrome's embedded Flash Player PPAPI plugin.

[Skylerbob]

I uninstalled the MacOS version. Now I just have the Chrome version. Would I be significantly more likely to get a virus with that than without it?

[_maria_]

The embedded PPAPI plugin & the non-embedded PPAPI plugin are the same plugin.  We hand-off the plugin to Google and they embed it into Chrome.

If Chrome is the only PPAPI-based browser, the recommendation is to only use the embedded PPAPI plugin.  Installing the PPAPI plugin separately when there is no need to results in you having to ensure its updated when a new version is available.  Whereas, Google automatically updates the embedded PPAPI plugin when a new version is available.

[Test Screen Name]

What do you mean by "normal Flash"? Flash does also come with Windows 10 because it is part of Internet Explorer and Edge browsers, and with recent versions of Mac OS because it is part of Safari. Why do you want to run "Adobe Flash Player Install Manager" specifically on your (I assume) Mac?