New Flash flaw could let attackers control Macs, Adobe urges users to update

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Comments

  • Reply 41 of 60
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    Marvin wrote: »

    Another thread of the same Adobe hate comments. I expect everyone has deleted Firefox too because of all the critical security flaws:

    Here's the deal, though. Adobe has said Flash is needed for the "Full Web Experience" and people have harped on Apple not including it by default on OS X and not including it all on iOS.
  • Reply 42 of 60
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Originally Posted by jungmark View Post

    Here's the deal, though. Adobe has said Flash is needed for the "Full Web Experience" and people have harped on Apple not including it by default on OS X and not including it all on iOS.



    If having my computer hijacked is the “full web experience”, I’m fine with a partial.

     

    Oh, and who says people HAVEN’T gotten rid of Firefox? It hasn’t been good since 2009.

  • Reply 43 of 60
    'Adobe advised its users to abandon Flash as soon as possible'

    Sorry, just dreaming.
  • Reply 44 of 60
    rivertriprivertrip Posts: 143member
    http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html

    more useful than the link in the article
  • Reply 45 of 60
    d4njvrzfd4njvrzf Posts: 797member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jungmark View Post





    Here's the deal, though. Adobe has said Flash is needed for the "Full Web Experience" and people have harped on Apple not including it by default on OS X and not including it all on iOS.



    How many Youtube videos can you watch on OS X without flash? The last time I checked, Safari still refuses to play many Youtube videos unless I manually install the Flash plugin. Since I prefer not to run Adobe's installer on my system, I end up just using Chrome to watch Youtube.

  • Reply 46 of 60
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Originally Posted by d4NjvRzf View Post

    How many Youtube videos can you watch on OS X without flash?

     

    Most of them.

  • Reply 47 of 60

    Sick of Flash updates, security and non-standardization.  Hard to remove it since there is still too much that uses it.  *sigh*

  • Reply 48 of 60
    charlitunacharlituna Posts: 7,217member
    And people shat on Apple for not supporting Flash in iOS.
  • Reply 49 of 60
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Disturbia View Post

     

    5+ years and counting .... living my digital life without these 2 piece of craps:

     

    1. Adobe Flash (and other garbage they sell!)

    2. F****ng JAVA!


     

    Life without would be nice, but I need Photoshop and it requires a Java runtime.

  • Reply 50 of 60
    disturbiadisturbia Posts: 563member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Lorin Schultz View Post

     

     

    Life without would be nice, but I need Photoshop and it requires a Java runtime.


    :)

     

    I understand. There are still products which require one or the other. Sad but true ...

  • Reply 51 of 60
    pmzpmz Posts: 3,433member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by PScooter63 View Post

     

     

    You're seriously arguing that Flash is the new COBOL?


     

     

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Disturbia View Post

     

    Yep! I don't need to watch porn ... so average I am!

     

    My point is if above average consumers stop accessing sites which are built on top of Flash / JAVA, then they'll try to come up with non Flash / JAVA solutions.

     

    Or at least, voice your concerns ....


     

    I am in full agreement that Flash has reached the point of unrecoverable, and everything that uses it MUST move beyond it.

     

    I am just pointing out what the average web-browsing, iPhone-owning consumer doesn't realize....that Flash and Java alike have HUGE uses across the business world that have not been replaced by anything just yet, and it will be several years before either legacy technology can be put out to pasture completely.

  • Reply 52 of 60
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by lkrupp View Post

     

    I have the Flash preference panel set to automatically install updates. I just checked and my Flash plugin is already at 13.0.0.206 so...


    Mine is too, but it didn't auto-update this time... mine was at .201 when I checked it on Adobe's site. 

  • Reply 53 of 60
    john.bjohn.b Posts: 2,742member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post



    Adobe ... advised users to update their system as quickly as possible.

     

    I advise users to dump Flash from their Macs as quickly as possible.  ;)

  • Reply 54 of 60
    john.bjohn.b Posts: 2,742member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lorin Schultz View Post

     

    Life without would be nice, but I need Photoshop and it requires a Java runtime.


     

    Only to launch, not for the program to run.  If you thought Adobe -- of all companies -- would be sensitive to this sort of thing, you'd be wrong...

  • Reply 55 of 60
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    jungmark wrote: »
    Here's the deal, though. Adobe has said Flash is needed for the "Full Web Experience" and people have harped on Apple not including it by default on OS X and not including it all on iOS.

    It's not Adobe's fault that content publishers embed videos using Flash. They provided this solution when there wasn't a cross-platform media framework to allow it. Youtube wouldn't exist today if it wasn't for Flash. HTML 5 video has only been supported in recent years, Youtube started in 2005. When people embedded Youtube videos, they had little choice but to use Flash.

    This was the case for self-embedded videos and competing video sites like Vimeo. Nowadays, this has been eroded away but there's still not really a standard authority saying 'here's how you embed an HTML 5 video on your website' because it's been designed by a committee and everybody wants their preferred format supported. Adobe just used the integrated approach like Apple does - they wanted to control the content publishing entirely so that it would perform consistently across all platforms and be a central authority to answer the question of how to publish videos. Their crime is providing tools when there were none and it wasn't Adobe that started it either, it was Macromedia.

    Animated gifs were stuck at 256 colors and very poor compression - the fact we still don't have a widely supported image replacement for gifs is ridiculous. Advertisers wanted fully animated, smooth, antialiased, full color advertising so they went with the available tools - Flash.

    Apple did the right thing in not allowing Flash and mobile devices will erode Flash away eventually but desktop browsing still makes up 80% of browsing. To really make the transition, it's up to online publishers to make the switch. Tech blogs are still using Flash to embed videos, Adobe isn't making them do it. There needs to be an easy guide for people to encode HTML 5 videos online and protect them from easy downloading. Flash offers DRM and streaming. It should be trivial to setup an HTML 5 streaming server under multiple hosting environments. It's not and so Adobe has to provide tools to do it:

    http://www.adobe.com/products/adobe-media-server-standard/buying-guide-comparison.html

    Apple's good at making the decision to change direction but they need to follow through with the tools. Apple dropped Flash and brought out no software at all to help drive HTML 5 adoption. They shouldn't have had to but nobody else bothered either and just took the path of least resistance by trying to back Flash on mobile. I love the fact that Apple stood their ground on this issue and I'm disappointed that so few companies sided with them on it because it shows how few companies there are that think like them but they needed to back up their argument by providing tools. They developed Quicktime, they have the expertise to provide a streaming server solution for embedded video.

    Just have a basic encoder that takes in a standard set of input formats supported by Quicktime and streaming server software that runs on Linux, Windows (incl Server) and OS X (incl Server) along with a framework to allow custom graphics to control the video playback. They could even offer a hosted solution for corporations. When people ask how to host video online, they have the solution. With that, Flash would be totally unnecessary. A lightweight HTML 5 content publishing app for ad banners would help push it further but that doesn't affect users.
  • Reply 56 of 60
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

    Animated gifs were stuck at 256 colors and very poor compression - the fact we still don't have a widely supported image replacement for gifs is ridiculous.

     

    We have APNG, though! What’s wrong with that? Why hasn’t anyone adopted it?

  • Reply 57 of 60
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by John.B View Post

     
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lorin Schultz View Post

     

    Life without would be nice, but I need Photoshop and it requires a Java runtime.


     

    Only to launch, not for the program to run.


     

    That's great! So, now how do you run a program without launching it?

     

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

     
    Just have a basic encoder that takes in a standard set of input formats supported by Quicktime and streaming server software that runs on Linux, Windows (incl Server) and OS X (incl Server) along with a framework to allow custom graphics to control the video playback. 


     

    Is there reason to believe that such a solution would offer significantly greater security than Flash, or would the frameworks to make it work just be reinventing the problem in a different form?

  • Reply 58 of 60
    disturbiadisturbia Posts: 563member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

     

    Most of them.


    Yep! ;)

     

  • Reply 59 of 60
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    Is there reason to believe that such a solution would offer significantly greater security than Flash, or would the frameworks to make it work just be reinventing the problem in a different form?

    When I say a framework for controls, I just meant Javascript code. That already exists for HTML 5 video controls anyway but if there were others needed like subtitles or whatever. Apple had to add Javascript events to handle touch input on iOS. Unlike Flash however, it would gracefully downgrade. The solution would require no client-side add-on. That's where the problem is with Flash - it's a 3rd party compatibility layer that has to keep getting maintained on top of upgrading the browser. As I've shown earlier though, the idea that Flash is any less secure than the browser itself doesn't really hold up. If you check vulnerabilities here, Safari has had more than Flash but around the same high risk vulnerabilities:

    http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-53/product_id-6761/Adobe-Flash-Player.html
    http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-49/product_id-2935/Apple-Safari.html

    Right now with Flash, publishers have to put content through Adobe's encoders and use Adobe's hosting software. For people who want to host their own content, that's what they turn to and they shouldn't have to. If simple, inexpensive tools were available to allow people to easily produce split stream videos to drop onto their own server, customize the UI and allow people to access it, nobody would even think about using Flash for embedded video. That helps mobile get the full web experience and it helps cut down reliance on Flash.

    It can be an addition to Compressor but it would be good to have a cross-platform solution. You'd drop your source video in and choose to output HTML 5 video. The preview window can let you create custom controls. On export, you get a folder of media (split streams or single file), you drop it on the server and link it in. One thing they have to allow for is those movie trailer video ads that take over a web page. They always use Flash for things like that and it's where Flash always has the advantage. When it's a single vendor, they can decide whatever they want to have for features, when lots of companies have to comply with the same rules, they tend to settle on a minimal list of essential features.
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