I recently upgraded the Flash Player plugin and standalone app on my Mac. Being somewhat paranoid, I always have Activity Monitor open showing all currently running processes. Since at least Flash 11.1, any web page with embedded flash opened in any browser on Mac OS X 10.6 or higher will cause a process named VDCAssistant to launch - regardless of the flash code being invoked. What is VDCAssistant? It's the process that controls access to the iSight camera and microphone.

Adobe assures us that this isn't a security flaw, and has basically refused to fix the problem. Call me crazy, but launching a process that accesses the camera and microphone (WHICH I DIDN'T WANT TO BEGIN WITH APPLE!!!) in my face whenever I access the internet is to me a pretty serious security flaw. Let them know it! http://bugs.adobe.com/