Hot on the heels of the antivirus firms targeting Flashback, Apple has released another Java update meant to identify and remove any infections of the malware. The company posted the update on Thursday afternoon both to its website and Software Update, making it the third Java update released by the company in just over a week.

"This Java security update removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware," Apple wrote in the support document for the update. "This update also configures the Java web plug-in to disable the automatic execution of Java applets. Users may re-enable automatic execution of Java applets using the Java Preferences application. If the Java web plug-in detects that no applets have been run for an extended period of time it will again disable Java applets."

Thursday's update is essentially the same version of Java released by Apple last week, but with a Flashback removal tool and a preference to control whether Java applets can run automatically or not. At this point in the game, it seems that most Mac users reading Ars probably already identified any infections and removed them, but Apple's latest update will undoubtedly cover users who are either still unaware of the infection or unsure of what to do about it.