Interesting question…Time to dump Adobe Flash Player?

Published on July 12, 2015 By DrJBHL In Personal Computing

Turns out Adobe has a known abuot a remote code execution security hole for seven months and not patched it (see ZDNet – not the only site running the story).

They blame MS…see Gregg Kizer’s blog.

I personally don’t give a rat’s toochis who’s guilty…I want it patched (should be out Tuesday, I think)…but that’s not the question.

Should the consumers be exerting pressure on MS and Adobe for this Swiss cheese coding? Should we be dumping Adobe Flash Player?

What do you think?

Comments (Page 2)

JuniorCrooks

on Jul 12, 2015

Well here is my experience with flash. I recently did a fresh Windows 7 install. Tried to watch a YouTube video and got the this site requires flash message. I downloaded adobe flash and once it was installed IE continually crashed. I spent a couple hours on Google searching for a fix and everything I tried did not work. After some thinking I recalled the problem occurred after the flash install so I completely deleted flash and voilà! no more crashes. Thanks Doc for the post.

DrJBHL

on Jul 13, 2015

moshi

reply 13

basically all browsers nowadays use HTML5 by default.

Strange. Google states (as does Adobe) that its browser uses Adobe Flash Player plugin, and it updates it by default, as does IE.

Turning off a plugin doesn't solve the problem of not being able to see content streamed only using it.

JuniorCrooks

reply 16

Thanks Doc for the post.

You're welcome, JC.

moshi

on Jul 13, 2015

DrJBHL

reply 17

Strange. Google states (as does Adobe) that its browser uses Adobe Flash Player plugin, and it updates it by default, as does IE.

of course. there is (less and less) Flash content on the internet. browsers nowadays use HTML5 by default, but if the content is not available as HTML5 then the plugin is needed. on YouTube it is needed for the one less capable browser (MS Internet Explorer) that does not support WEBM.

DrJBHL

reply 17

Turning off a plugin doesn't solve the problem of not being able to see content streamed only using it.

turning off a plugin to play only on demand has several benefits. most importantly it protects you from potential malicious code that would otherwise be executed as you load a website in your browser. it also saves you from blinking Flash ads in case you do not use an addblocker. and third it saves bandwidth and loads sites faster.

in a modern browser you can also define exceptions from the general rule.

btw.: that Aviator browser that you (i hope: no longer) consider to be "very secure" has this setting turned on by default if i remember correctly

XavierMace

on Jul 14, 2015

Unfortunately there's still a lot of business/enterprise products that use Flash. VMWare Web Client and vRealize Operations/vCOPS both require flash. Solarwinds Orion also uses Flash. The environments I support (banking industry) have a lot of applications that use Flash as well.

While I completely agree it needs to go away, you guys might be surprised how much stuff still uses Flash. Ditto for Java which I put in the same bucket. Unfortunately business products often move at a far slower pace than public access stuff. I literally can't do my job without Flash and Java.

Cameochi

on Sep 08, 2015

I have Flash installed but disabled. Frankly, I have no faith whatsoever in Adobe products as they do not seem to grasp the need for security even in this day and age.

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