Flash In “Critical” State – Will It Survive ?
If it was already not enough that Steve Jobs and associates have been firing at Flash long way, now it seems like most of the people will do the same. Without a doubt, actionscript is a far more superior and innovative language in the world compared to any other. But the recently discovered flaw with Flash player run-time, might be the nail in the coffin that apple ha been waiting for.
Ever since the fire on Flash started, i have been noticing that the community still sticks to its creativity rather than politics. We have seen many more experiments coming up, flash on mobile devices, flash interacting with circuit boards, new frameworks, new extensions and lots more. But all this may be gone soon.
I guess at this point each member of the community has  a right to know , how seriously has Adobe work on flash for all these years. Flash had almost 10 years of  unrivaled dominion. All this time was enough to put some effort into security. Though we appreciate the efforts that the Flash team has put in to give us new feature, better performances etc:
For those of you not aware of the situation , i would recommend reading  here, which states,
“A critical vulnerability exists in Adobe Flash Player 10.0.45.2 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris operating systems, and the authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX operating systems. This vulnerability (CVE-2010-1297) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat.“
As of yet there is no fix available for it, and many sites have recommended people to uninstall flash player. The Extent of the flaw goes as far as a hacker taking control of your PC. This issue is going to affect everyone in the most critical way possible. All your work even till the latest revision of flash player 10.0.45.2 are in question. Luckily i dont read anything about Flash Lite in this mess.
- For Adobe it means loosing in the stock market and drop in sales of products that revolve around Flash – example: Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder, Flash Cs5 …
- For a Developer it means a dry period for  Flash projects (may be even completely giving up developing in flash).
As i have observed, we have all been very thrilled at Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture and many others. We have been thrilled about Flash player 10 Byte Array access and the Flash Player 10.1, mobile ecosystem. But we dont know if Adobe has a good “Security Testing Team“. I have been a great admirer of Adobe and it gives me great pain to say that Adobe is walking on Microsoft’s footsteps, when it comes to security flaws products.
Dear Adobe -
“ It takes years of dedication and innovation to be noticed and loved for in a market of heavy competition. While it only takes one bad move to take away all that“.
Flash is going to need lot more then just luck to  get out of this. As Steve Jobs , has just gotten more people convinced about lack of security in flash. I guess we need a trust-able and stable Flash player before moving to advance versions.  In my view the community should speak up now, before its too late.
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June 8, 2010
Tags: Flash, News Posted in: Commercial, General
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by tony murphy, MojoGeeks. MojoGeeks said: Flash In “Critical” State – Will It Survive ?: If it was already not enough, that Steve Jobs and associates have b… http://bit.ly/9e4LIY [...]
“But still users will be more convinced at the fact that Flash is a risk. correct me if i am wrong.”
I guess that could become true if lots of people over exagerate the issue publically as this post does.
I have never used a apple product so i cant say for them. But i know how Microsoft has earned their bad reputation over time. “Sweep that flaw under the carpet” policy. – When you love someone, you must have the sense to applaud their achievements and criticize their flaws. Other wise you are just a carefree jump-ship guy in my opinion. Flash remains far more creative than any other technology, provided its is confronted regularly to outshine its flaws.
Thanks for the insight John. I really hope all is solved without further hurting flash.
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