Facebook calls to end Adobe’s Flash Player as Firefox blocks it over hacking holes

Adobe’s Flash blocked by mainstream browser over critical security bugs actively exploited by hackers, as calls for its decommissioning rise

Flash Players’s problems began somewhere in March, 2013, when security researchers discovered not one but five Zero-days and flaws in the software. Since then Flash Player has been on a downhill ride to hell.
This year has really been bad for Flash, with two more Zero-days being discovered before the Hacking Team hack attack. Now with the Hacking Team leaks becoming public, it seems, Adobe’s Flash Player seems ready for extermination.
That means users of Firefox cannot use Flash by default and will not be able to until Adobe patches the security bugs and updates the plugin. Adobe has struggled to keep up with the number of bugs and vulnerabilities being exposed within Flash.
Microsoft has already ditched Flash Player in its upcoming Microsoft Edge browser in favour of its Silverlight, while Google’s Chrome is no longer be supporting it in favour of HTML5. Even YouTube has ditched Flash for HTML5. Now Facebook Security honcho,
At the same time, Facebook’s head of security Alex Stamos, who is previously credited with significantly improving the security of Yahoo’s operations, called for Flash to be killed off.

It is time for Adobe to announce the end-of-life date for Flash and to ask the browsers to set killbits on the same day.
— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) July 12, 2015

Stamos said that a date for the decommissioning of Flash needed to be set in stone so that the industry has time to switch away from the much maligned plugin. “Nobody takes the time to rewrite their tools and upgrade to HTML5 because they expect Flash to live forever. We need a date to drive it,” said Stamos.

Many alternatives have been made available to replace Flash. Several high-profile video streaming services, including Sky TV and Netflix switched to Microsoft’s Silverlight instead of Flash. Even Silverlight, however, has been rejected by browsers including Google’s Chrome, forcing others to use HTML5.

The move towards using native HTML5 for the majority of Flash uses has been welcomed by most, although some services that require digital rights management to secure licences have resisted the move.

Should Facebook ditch Flash wholesale, which is still used by some of the games and apps published on the social network by third-party publishers and a few of its own upload tools, it would send a powerful message.

The majority of the large US technology companies, including Google and Apple, which famously blocked Flash from existing on its iPhone and iPad, have moved towards more modern and secure technologies.

Stamos and others are advocating that now is the time to put Flash out to pasture.

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