Mozilla Firefox has blocked Adobe Flash Player and it’s a good news.
If you are a regular Firefox user you must have faced this issue like whenever you open a website using flash it warns about blocking the flash part.
The Firefox browser has blocked it until a new update being released; the only reason of blocking was to maintain the security of its users as it has always done.
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“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,” he said in a tweet.
We are committed to protecting our users from security risks. That's why–following an Adobe alert–we temporarily blocked #Flash in Firefox.
— Firefox 🔥 (@firefox) July 14, 2015
What is Flash?
Well, flash is a software which we use to view those videos. The well-known browsers like Google Chrome, Apple’s Safari, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are currently using it. So we can understand it is an important plug-in as, without it, you can not view a videos or animation supporting it.
The Mozilla Firefox officially tweeted,
“To provide our users from any security threats, we are officially blocking the Flash Player Plug-in on temporary basis”.
Mozilla’s Product Management ‘Chad Weiner’ told, that as Adobe had advised them on two serious vulnerabilities in flash players latest versions as well as the old versions for Linux, Macintosh and Windows was the reason for blocking it.
The reason for blocking the plug-in was a few weaknesses that came up after the leaks of a high profile Hacking Team. On 6th July 2015, leaks took place when a group of hackers penetrated into an Italian firm which sells surveillance tools to governments around the world.
The news came out when about 400GB of data which was stolen was published online by these hackers; it also included the codes of the spy tools.
As soon as the official news came out, twitter was filled up with many tweets which said, Adobe Flash player should be stopped forever.
The hackers as well targeted the flaws which Adobe flash plug-in faced. As soon as it was found out that hackers had started using flash bugs in their criminal activities, the Mozilla engineers came up with the conclusion of temporarily blocking adobe Plug-in to keep its users secure.
“Browsers should stop the use of Adobe Flash forever and basically end it the same day,” said, Facebook’s new Chief Officer on Security ‘Alex Stamos’.
Even Apple’s former late CEO Steve Jobs had expressed his dislike for Flash and tried his best to keep the iPhone as well as iPad away from Flash.
Later, the Product Management head officially announced that the present Block was not a permanent one and Firefox will allow the plug-in to start working once this issue is solved by Adobe leading to zero security issues related to Flash.
A new release of Adobe Flash player is about to come up this week itself and will be activated on its own. There were no replies by the company regarding whether it has any plans to permanently stop the use of this plug-in.
There was also no comment from Google and Microsoft on the question that whether they were planning to block Flash or no?
One thing that we learn here is, Firefox will and has always been aggressive whenever there are any issues regarding the security of its users.
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