eBuzz - To Flash or Not to Flash, That is the Question

To Flash or Not to Flash, That is the Question

Even more bad news in the security department: The Register reported on Sunday that...

Researchers from Google have documented serious vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash content which leave thousands of websites susceptible to attacks that steal the personal details of visitors. A web search reveals more than 500,000 vulnerable applets on major corporate, government and media sites. Removing the vulnerable content will require combing through website directories for SWF files and then testing them one by one. Updates in the Adobe software that renders SWF files in browsers are also likely, but they probably wouldn't quell the threat completely... No patch in sight from Adobe, that's the price to pay for depending on proprietary solutions.

The problem is compounded by the fact that some of the most popular web development tools for generating SWF produce files containing the recently disclosed vulnerabilities.

While we all became enamoured of flash when it first came out in the 90s, it may be time to start using it even more sparingly than ever. It's not good for search engine optimization, and now it's become a potential security problem as well.

For those who insist on accessing flash sites, certain browsers offer extensions that will block flash (and presumably this vulterability); on Firefox, for example, there's an extension called Flashblock that blocks flash by default (but allows the user to re-enable it on a page-wide or applet-by-applet basis). Several other extensions will do the same thing.

And that's our take on the news today!

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