

Flash offers a large attack surface, and because animation is often computationally demanding, Flash needed deep access to many aspects of the computer to work well, making any flaw potentially serious. The web is a hostile place for browsers, however, and the more functionality exposed to the web, the larger the surface exposed to attack. So what will it take to kill it?īack in the web's dim and distant past (the 1990s), web pages were static, unyielding things with just text and images and occasionally a dumb animated GIF that everyone but the designer hated.

#Firefox adobe plugin preoblem software
Yet it's also one of the most popular pieces of software on the planet.

The Flash plugin is notorious for being riddled with security flaws and other shortcomings. Three of these vulnerabilities were in Flash, and some of those revealed in the leaked documents appeared in attack kits available online within hours – faster than the developers of the affected programs could fix the holes, let alone distribute the updates to millions of users worldwide. Zero-day vulnerabilities are great news for criminals. The huge leak of the firm's company data also revealed details of previously unknown vulnerabilities in software that could be exploited to provide ways of hacking computers – known as zero-day vulnerabilities because the software's manufacturer has no time to fix the problem. The software and services that Hacking Team sells provide the means for its government and law enforcement clients to break into and even control computers remotely through the internet. This may be the final straw: Mozilla has disabled Flash by default in its Firefox browser, and Facebook's chief of security has called for Adobe to set a date when the program will be taken behind the shed and shot. This has more information on Flash Player hardware acceleration, if you're interested.The ironic hack of Hacking Team, the controversial security and surveillance software firm, exposed yet another brace of security flaws and vulnerabilities in Flash, the hugely popular multimedia animation plugin for web browsers. # Click '''Close''' to close the Adobe Flash Player Settings Window. # Remove the check mark from '''Enable hardware acceleration'''. # Click on the icon at the bottom-left of the Adobe Flash Player Settings window to open the Display panel. The Adobe Flash Player Settings screen will open. #Click on '''Settings''' in the context menu. #Right-click on the Flash Player logo on that page. (See ] for more information on using the Flash plugin in Firefox). Disable hardware acceleration and restart flash. The other step you can take is to right click on the player and select the Settings. This Flash Player Help - Display Settings page has more information on Flash Player hardware acceleration, if you're interested.ĭoes this solve the problem? Let us know.

(See this article for more information on using the Flash plugin in Firefox). Reinstalling flash is the default troubleshooting step, however since you do not have admin access to the computer it is possible to disable and renable flash from the about:plugins page.
