After Mozilla moved Flash into the “blocked by default” category on its Firefox browser, it’s safe to say the antique and loathed plugin is one step closer to being killed once and for all. Mozilla’s determined decision came just a day after Facebook’s security chief asked Adobe to shut down Flash for good.
Their reactions are not surprising, however, as the Flash-bashing began last week, after it became public knowledge that Hacking Team (yes, the same cybersecurity firm part of the recent data breach fiasco), was using Flash to take control over people’s personal computers and send them malware.
This discovery was made possible after important documents were leaked in breach, showing how Hacking Team exploited two critical weaknesses of Flash’s code. In response, Alex Stamos, Facebooks’ security chief, asked Adobe to announce a time when Flash will officially go out of order.
Next up was Mark Schmidt, Mozilla’s support chief, who was quick to follow suit. On Monday night, he tweeted that Flash – in all of its despicable versions – will no longer be supported by Firefox. Basically, if Firefox users will want to keep accessing Flash content, they will have to switch to another browser.
However, it’s not as bad as it sounds, as both Firefox and its users probably won’t even notice the difference. According to a technology survey company, the percentage of websites using Flash is somewhere under 11 percent, which is good news for Mozilla. Most of its users won’t migrate to other browsers for such a low number of sites.
Flash is basically a type of software – an add-on extension to the browser – which enables the user to watch rich content online. In spite of its popularity a decade ago, Flash soon became the black sheep of the add-on family. Even YouTube’s videos were entirely Flash-based back in 2005, but that changed as it started to experiment with playing videos natively in browser.
Steve Jobs was one of the first to bash the absolutely horrific security records that Flash was constantly reporting, blaming it for being “the number one reason Macs crash.” And he was right, as Symantec’s annual list of vulnerable plug-in software is constantly topped by Flash.
Mozilla said that Flash might one day be re-enabled in its browser, saying that its current break from it could be stopped if Adobe releases an improved version that doesn’t allow such active exploitation.
Image Source: Tech Spot