Facebook's New Security Chief Calls On Adobe To Kill Flash

[Guest]

Facebook's new Chief Security Office calls on Adobe to set an end-of-life date for Flash and kill it once and for all, in order to stop the stream of critical vulnerabilities found in Flash every year.

Facebook's New Security Chief Calls On Adobe To Kill Flash : Read more

 

[mrmike_49]

YES!!!!!!!
YES!!!!!
oh REALLY REALLY YES!!!!!

 

[derekullo]

RIP Flash.
So many memories of playing games while at school.

 

[spectrewind]

What I'm reading is:
Competitor #1, using the guise of 'security', asking Competitor #2 to stop making something, making it easier for Competitor #1 to advance an agenda.

 

[RedJaron]

What I'm reading is:
Competitor #1, using the guise of 'security', asking Competitor #2 to stop making something, making it easier for Competitor #1 to advance an agenda.

Uh, exactly how is Facebook a competitor to Adobe?

 

[BulkZerker]

Hehehheheheh. Oh wait your serious, let me laugh even harder. BWAAAAAHAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAHAAAHAAA!

 

[Achoo22]

I have a deep, loathing hatred of Flash. We've cultivated a great many tools for processing information on the Internet and Flash tries to break all of them. Proxies, rendering engines, JavaScript/ECMA engines, browser plugins, screen scrapers, translation engines, and all the other tools we use to process the Internet are under threat from Flash. I only enable it when I absolutely must, and I'll be exceedingly happy when it dies.

With respect to security... the Internet would be a safer place if browser vendors would stop trying to integrate all manner of useless crap into the browsing experience. We don't need VRML, we don't need hardware 3D, etc., etc. If I really want to play your game, I'll download a standalone version.

 

[nitrium]

Flash needs to die ASAP. If IE, Firefox and Chrome all dropped support for it simultaneously it would be instadeath for Flash, surely. Why don't the major browser companies just get together and agree on this one obvious thing? It already is completely unsupported (i.e. not working) on mobile devices (iOS and Android), so I see no reason why we can't also get rid of it on the desktop.

 

[Blueberries]

Wasn't Flash privatized a long time ago?

 

[RedJaron]

Flash needs to die ASAP. If IE, Firefox and Chrome all dropped support for it simultaneously it would be instadeath for Flash, surely. Why don't the major browser companies just get together and agree on this one obvious thing? It already is completely unsupported (i.e. not working) on mobile devices (iOS and Android), so I see no reason why we can't also get rid of it on the desktop.

I can just see it, they all "agree" to drop it and then one of the three secretly agrees to keep Flash support. Suddenly they're the only browser that works with Flash and all the blinking 10's out there immediately adopt that browser for Flash because they don't know any better.

 

[alidan]

what i want is flash to go legacy mode.
the last iteration before it just get support to keep working
all flash is run in a sandbox

this would allow people to use the flash tools and still put out flash things (im thinking animation here, as its very low space and high quality compared to other methods i know that take tons of space more for lower quality) but because its now legacy it will make people go to something new for things like video.

you than have to make flash run in a sandbox... with no access to outside files, in the cases where it creates and saves a file its allowed to use than in the sandbox, but the sandbox renames it to something that will not execute unless the user does something stupid.

 

[jasonkaler]

Guys like facebook need to stop allowing flash on their platform.
You don't need adobe to kill it, you just need everyone to stop using it.

 

[ravewulf]

It would help if Facebook itself would stop using Flash. Not only do they still use it for video in places, but they use it to play animated gifs! Gifs! Browsers have had built in support for forever and Facebook uses Flash instead?! If the want "click to play" support they easily could have done that with JavaScript, but instead they use Flash. It's so incredibly stupid.

 

[clifftam]

I think the problem is that flash is a cash cow for Adobe and it is hard for them to let it go. Flash should be gone by now especially with HTML5. But it is not and flash is still plug-in in so many websites. Which is sad.

 

[eltidi]

Vmware take notice, your flash web client is just on his last legs, write an html5 app to replace it asap.

 

[MidnightDistort]

Need to abandon flash totally unsecured piece of junk that is worse than the fact we're still depending on fossil fuels. Should just block flash period so it would die or be properly updated to current tech.

 

[zanny]

We still have not replaced Flash everywhere, since HLS live streaming is not available on Windows or Linux desktops, only on OSX / iOS / Android. That means that, say, Twitch cannot switch yet from Flash. Get on Google / Mozilla's case to ship desktop variants of Android Chrome / Firefox HLS support. They put it there first because its where you cannot get flash anymore.

 

[mrmike_49]

http://gizmodo.com/firefox-now-blocks-flash-by-default-1717664482

It's a start!

 

[gorfmaster1]

Chrome and Firefox started the ball rolling, im not sure why this guy makes the news since it has already started happening for a few weeks already.

 

[Abandon All Hope]

Why don't websites just quit using Flash? That's a good way of killing it.

 

[RedJaron]

Why don't websites just quit using Flash? That's a good way of killing it.

Because they're invested in it. Flash is used for pictures, video, interaction and navigation, and a whole lot of other stuff. Simply turning off Flash on a site like Facebook means more than half their content won't work. They would need to redo a lot of code to get other means up to replace what Flash does for them now.

However, I do think it's a bit hypocritical of FB to say they think Flash should be retired when they still heavily use it. They should have said we don't like it and so we're going to start phasing it out and make the necessary changes.

 

[edgudz]

Facebook uses flash in MULTIPLE places, one namely to show videos, so this is just a case of the pot calling the kettle black. If Facebook REALLY wanted to ditch flash they would have done so long ago instead of calling out Adobe on this. I think Facebook continues to use flash for it's own disturbing purposes seeing on how insecure flash is.

 

[Phuntasm]

I like flash games - they are nice time-killers, and there are some very inventive puzzle games freely accessible online. I think I, as the user of the browser, should have a choice in the matter.

Since security is a concern, I think a better solution would be to have a default option that disables Flash on all websites. We should be able to turn this feature off, or add white-list exclusions to it.

 

[lartomar2002]

Facebook's new Chief Security Office calls on Adobe to set an end-of-life date for Flash and kill it once and for all, in order to stop the stream of critical vulnerabilities found in Flash every year.

Facebook's New Security Chief Calls On Adobe To Kill Flash : Read more

Not only is Flash a security problem but so is Adobe Air. Lets do away with it also?

 

[castl3bravo]

Flash needs to die not only because it's an unnecessary security risk but because it kills your battery. Whenever the fans kick it is because Flash is pigging out on CPU for no good reason.

This issue was placed in the web technology spotlight years ago by Steve Jobs. Adobe never fixed the issue because they know they can continue pushing flash onto the webmaster. The webmasters continue drinking Adobe's koolaide.

Solution: Disable flash and if a website doesn't work then stop using it. The webmasters will fix the problem if you INSIST on web pages that don't use flash.