Another Reason to Move Away from Adobe Flash Player

[HanaBi]

Flash, has been around for a number of years, and offers a smooth interface twixt the WWW and a user's device in terms of playing videos and animations etc. However, the application has also been under continued attack from hackers to the point where Apple and Google (amongst others) have more or less dumped/disabled the app from their device platforms.

As the article below demonstrates, Flash is still vulnerable to relatively basic exploits despite constant patch updates from Adobe (Adobe itself, suffered a major data breach in 2013 when hackers stole almost 40 million user records, including logins, passwords and credit card details).

Flash really should be left on the shelf to wither and die because it is far too flaky to be used with any solid confidence. Plus, there are better alternatives out there, not least the far more robust HTML5 and Lightspark.




Patch or ditch Adobe Flash: Exploit on sale, booby-trapped Office docs spotted in the wild

 

[J Riff]

Replaced with what? I mean, to play youTube etc. I had trouble with Firefox starting up flash plug-ins, but it stays quiet now in Opera.

 

[Overread]

The problem is any software which is used by the masses is going to suffer the same issue of being the focus of hackers and those with malicious intent. So if Flash goes away something else will replace it and if that something else becomes big enough to be the standard it will get the same volume of hacker attention.

Granted it might be better software and a fresh start has the bonus of being able to work, partly, without legacy code that might be a weakness today for Flash - however the way the net is anything new still has to work with all those flash files in order to be picked up

 

[Brian G Turner]

Flash had a wonderful habit of crashing Firefox. It got so bad I ended up moving to chrome, which could handle it better.

 

[Edward M. Grant]

I managed to get away for a couple of years without Flash. Unfortunately I had to install it recently for Createspace's book previewer.

But that does show it's less and less necessary these days. Apple refusing to let Flash onto iOS must have been a big reason for that, because few people want a website that doesn't work on iPhones and iPads.