Mozilla Firefox pulls the plug on Adobe Flash Player

These vulnerabilities were added to exploit kits that cyber thieves use when they design campaigns seeking to take over computers. However, it is still widely used for both multimedia and interactive elements.

Adobe’s Flash Player has been hit by no fewer than three serious zero-day vulnerabilities in the last two weeks, following the theft of data from grey-hat group Hacking Team. Adobe, the makers of Flash, has pledged to release a fix to address those vulnerabilities this week.

That meant that all users of Firefox could not access Flash content because they could not turn the plug-in on. Interestingly, on Monday, July 13, Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, tweeted that Adobe would be better off killing Flash for good due to the flaws, which makes it susceptible to attacks.

Adobe Flash has seen more than its fair share of vulnerabilities during its history. “One way to protect yourself is by disabling or removing Flash, but if your trusted websites require Flash, you can change your plugin settings so that Flash runs only when you click to activate it”.

One of the bugs – which affects Windows, OS X, and Linux, and can be used against browsers like IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari -would allow attackers to hijack targeted computers through a flaw in Flash Player. According to analysis firms that monitor desktop browsers, Firefox is the third most popular desktop browser.

There are still some sites that rely on Flash, which is probably why Adobe continues to release new versions of the tool (even though the company killed Flash for mobile devices ages ago). Since then, numerous tech experts have joined the war against Adobe Flash over the years, calling for the plugin’s death.

He said: “Nobody takes the time to rewrite their tools and upgrade to HTML5 because they expect Flash to live forever”.

Blocking Flash in browsers other than Firefox is a task that is easier said than done.