- The Windows XP PC in question has the usual anti-virus and firewall precautions.
- It has the most recent Windows Updates and anti-virus updates installed.
- Flash is used only to play videos (located on the machine's hard disk) which are known to be safe.
- The PC is not used to browse the web at all - the only browser, IE8, is never opened.
- The Adobe Flash player install is about 3 months old.
I suspect any unpatched software could be a potential threat, but would be interested to know how bad the above situation is (relative to a fully-patched system).