Finally, Goodbye Adobe Flash
10,000 of hacked devices, 1000's of victims around the world, wholesale hacks, all thanks to the ancient hero and warrior Adobe Flash.
Let us first know what is Adobe Flash, which is a technology or program for displaying multimedia in browsers and running some games inside the browser. It was used tremendously previously, as the most powerful multimedia player inside the browser, it required several privileges and powers from the browser, which gave it a special character that provokes the saliva of hats. Blackening and making it a focus for exploitable vulnerabilities inside the browser and then within the operating system.
As it enables hackers to spy on the browser and open windows, collect passwords, etc., and sometimes if the vulnerability is high-risk, then it enables the hackers to escalate the powers and penetrate the operating system as a whole and spread their malware or spy on users, etc.
The annoying thing in the history of Adobe Flash is the frequency of errors, vulnerabilities, and zero-day vulnerabilities, dramatically, rapidly, and without interruption, and because of the frequency of these vulnerabilities, it was possible for anyone browsing the Internet to be a victim of an attack or a victim of a hacker around the world, regardless of his level of security awareness And his discipline.
One of the things that cannot be forgotten in 2016 for three consecutive months is that high-risk zero-day vulnerabilities are published to the general public and once Adobe patches them, hackers publish zero-day vulnerabilities again for three months in a row. Hackers have loved Adobe Player to the point of madness! ! Don't you think so?
Despite all these problems, security flaws, and breaches, why did Adobe not abandon Adobe player?
This is mainly due to designers and developers around the world whose sites mainly rely on Adobe player services, which would push Adobe to update it periodically and correct its security flaws, which has cost Adobe a lot of effort to correct and patch security defects continuously.
But in July of 2017, Adobe officially announced that the Adobe player entered the EOL stage, short for End Of Life.
But the surprise is that the EOL period was very long, as Adobe announced that the EOL period is 3 years, (for periods of death 3 years is considered a very long period) and support will end in late 2020, calling on users to research and rely on other technologies.
Will Adobe Player Actually Die?
If we look at XP, which was officially cut off from support in 2014, we find that it is still running about 3% of operating systems today (which is a very large number, i.e. millions of devices around the world still using XP to this day) despite the accumulation of serious vulnerabilities and security warnings Upgrade to newer versions.
Is it the end hour?
Yes, officially, Microsoft began distributing the update KB4577586 to Windows10 users, which would remove Adobe Flash Player from users' systems. The update appeared on October 27, 2020 and is now being circulated to all users.
Although Adobe Player is ridiculous today thanks to HTML5, SVG and other modern technologies, it was once the backbone of internet operation.