Adobe Flash now crashing Mac browsers?

Over the weekend a lot of Macintosh users (myself included) noticed that certain sites crashed their browsers. ESPN, Walmart.com, Forbes, YouTube, Facebook, etc. What was the culprit?

Adobe's Flash.

I don't want to speculate that this has something to do with Apple forbidding Flash to be available on the iPhone - nor would I hesitate from ruling it out completely, however, there is a serious problem here. And as of Monday morning there is no official fix from Adobe or Apple.

The problem for me was on Camino, Safari, Firefox and Opera - using the latest versions on all of them. I did update my Adobe Flash CS3 Application last week via the automated installer - so maybe Adobe slipped me an application "mickey".

To "fix" I used Adobe's slightly archaic but effective Flash uninstaller. Once uninstalled, I could access the sites fine - no freezes or crashes. However, a fresh install of the latest version of Flash left my browser in the beach ball of death mode, again. Other people on the boards had some success with disabling Javascript (this isn't a fix) or uninstalling and reinstalling and restarting. Most however, including myself are currently without Flash until a fix becomes available.

Some forum members also suggested reinstalling Quicktime would help. It also appears that not all Flash content causes the crash - as some Flash banner ads work on the effected browsers.

From the support forums at Apple and Adobe, I don't appear to be the only one having this problem. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people seem to be having this same issue.

Adobe? Apple? Real? Perian? Anyone home?