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Adobe Releases Sandboxed Flash Player For Firefox

Trailrunner7 writes "Adobe has released a new version of their Flash player that now gives Firefox users the additional security of a sandbox and also includes a background update mechanism for Mac users. Flash has run in a sandbox on Google Chrome and Internet Explorer for some time already. The big security news in Flash player 11.3 is the addition of the protected mode sandbox for Firefox on Windows. That's a major change for Adobe, which has been adding sandbox to its main product lines for a couple of years now. Adobe Reader X has run in protected mode — which is what Adobe calls its sandbox — since its release, and the company also added a sandbox to Flash on Google Chrome. The sandbox is designed to prevent attackers from using vulnerabilities in Flash to break out of the application and move to other apps or the OS itself."

32 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. How about they release a new 64bit version for Lin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How about they release a new 64bit version for Linux? The colour in YT videos is totally messed up on my Ubuntu box

  2. Re:How about they release a new 64bit version for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    adobe hates linux.

  3. Huh by masternerdguy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I thought adobe was abandoning flash.

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    1. Re:Huh by SJHillman · · Score: 5, Funny

      The captain never leaves a sinking ship!

      Unless he's Italian.

    2. Re:Huh by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Funny

      Vada A Bordo, Cazzo!

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    3. Re:Huh by greenfruitsalad · · Score: 5, Funny

      Dear Adobe,

      I really hope you do not give up on Flash. I want Flash to live and I want it to be used everywhere. I love it, I love the idea of it, I love everything about it. I want as little web content to be written in html5 as possible.

      I dread the day when I start my web browser and all that colourful flashing cpu hogging vomit that I avoid by NOT having installed flashplugin will have been converted to html5. It'll be like going back to 1996 when web was full of GIFs. Please do NOT do this to me; do not abandon Flash.

      Sincerely yours, world's biggest Flash fan

  4. Re:How about they release a new 64bit version for by TheCycoONE · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm not sure if you recall, but Flash for linux is discontinued unless you're using the bundled Chrome version (http://www.osnews.com/story/25639). In light of that I've given up on the idea of them fixing any major bugs for that platform.

  5. Excellent News! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    This really solidifies Flash as the web container of choice and knocks HTML 5 for six!

    Gotta be a sad day if you're an IOS user.

    1. Re:Excellent News! by MightyYar · · Score: 2

      Yes, this extra layer of software is sure to make it as responsive as a native video decoder.

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  6. Re:How about they release a new 64bit version for by cheesybagel · · Score: 2, Informative

    I guess someone will have to get Gnash to work. Or something.

  7. Best sandbox ever ... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've personally found the best way to sandbox Flash is to not install it.

    I honestly can't name a single site that I care about that uses it -- possibly because Flash makes me immediately not care about a web site. I know some people really like it, and it does things they really think is cool, but to me it's been something I've avoided for a long time now.

    But, who knows, maybe next week I'll discover something I can't live without that uses it.

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    1. Re:Best sandbox ever ... by h4rr4r · · Score: 3, Informative

      They have an HTML5 version for many things.

    2. Re:Best sandbox ever ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      YouTube? I know a few people visit that site.

      YouTube can be watched with a Python script.

    3. Re:Best sandbox ever ... by gstoddart · · Score: 2

      YouTube? I know a few people visit that site.

      But not me ... I usually use a prominent "You need to install Flash" as a cue to hit the back button.

      I have no doubt that there are sites that loads of people use that are heavy on Flash. I'm aware of the technology, and I'm not saying that others don't use it or that they shouldn't be allowed to.

      I'm saying I, personally, do not install it on any machine I control, and generally think it's a nuisance. If I hit a site which requires Flash, I leave. I've yet to find a compelling enough reason to make me want to install Flash, but I've found plenty of compelling reasons to uninstall it or block flash on web pages.

      It's also something I've treated as a giant security hole for the last decade. The fact that they're sandboxing it tells me nothing has changed.

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    4. Re:Best sandbox ever ... by Shikaku · · Score: 3, Informative

      http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/94609

      This forces HTML5 forever, and it seems to work with just about any video.

      Greasemonkey required though.

  8. Re:Would be nice if it wasn't a memory hog by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Funny

    My phone has more RAM than that.
    I suggest you spend $10 and buy more RAM.

    Heck I might even mail you some if you ask nicely.

  9. Death to Flash! by bandy · · Score: 2
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    1. Re:Death to Flash! by tepples · · Score: 3, Funny

      And if YouTube keeps showing you "Cannot display video", change your user agent string for the iPad one.

      At which point you get "This video cannot be displayed on mobile devices."

  10. Re:Would be nice if it wasn't a memory hog by terbeaux · · Score: 3, Informative

    Aside from getting more memory I would recommend that you update one of "the most targeted pieces of software" more often then just when YT stops working. There have been so many exploits released for Flash and Adobe released a lot of security updates to address them. http://www.gfi.com/blog/the-most-vulnerable-operating-systems-and-applications-in-2011/

  11. Re:How about they release a new 64bit version for by Hatta · · Score: 2

    Just use dwhelper and mplayer.

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  12. Glad I don't work for Adobe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can only imagine how tough it would be to be a developer on the Flash team. Would you even want that on your resume? I'm not sure I would want to be associated with one of the most hated, least trusted applications out there. I'm guessing that when people find out you work on Flash, you would be constantly forced to defend Adobe and the Flash team or admit that you were part of a huge failure.

  13. Re:Would be nice if it wasn't a memory hog by cpu6502 · · Score: 2

    >>>My phone has more RAM than that.

    Doubtful. It might have more Flash or ROM storage, but not more than 512 MB RAM. For example the iPhone 3 had half of that. Anyway, I thought about adding more RAM to my desktop but I honestly thought it would die 2-3 years ago (and then I'd have wasted money). But it just keeps ticking.

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  14. Re:Would be nice if it wasn't a memory hog by h4rr4r · · Score: 2

    My Galaxy Nexus has 1GB of RAM. The Galaxy S3 has 2GB of RAM.

    It has 32GB of flash. Which is not read only.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Nexus
    Welcome to 2012.

  15. Re:How about they release a new 64bit version for by opus_magnum · · Score: 2

    They won't. And I assume you're using the nvidia binary driver. In that case, the only known solution is installing a patched version of libvdpau or disabling the hardware accelerated rendering.

  16. Only Chrome, not even other Pepper implementations by tepples · · Score: 4, Informative

    I was under the impression that it wouldn't even be available for Chromium Browser, which implements the same Pepper API as Google Chrome. According to Adobe's blog, not only will Flash Player "only be available via the 'Pepper' API", but the Pepper version will be distributed "as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe". So even if you have another browser that implements Pepper, it still won't be able to run Flash Player for Pepper because Flash Player for Pepper is exclusive to Google Chrome.

  17. Re:Flash vector animations and Flash games by Hatta · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I recommend their authors port their work to a non-proprietary format, or resign their proprietary crap to the dustbins of history where it belongs.

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  18. How to port? by tepples · · Score: 2

    I recommend their authors port their work to a non-proprietary format

    I agree with you in principle. However:

    I thought since Adobe changed its SWF spec licensing policy years ago as part of the Open Screen Project, SWF was a non-proprietary format. And even if not, what solution do you recommend for an author to convert something like Homestar Runner or Weebl and Bob to a non-proprietary format? And what techniques should I use to convince authors to do so?

  19. Note: not for XP by PatPending · · Score: 4, Informative

    From Adobe's news release:

    [Emphasis added]

    The restrictions we apply to this sandboxed process come from the Windows OS. Windows Vista and Windows 7 provide the tools necessary to properly sandbox a process. For the Adobe Reader and Acrobat sandbox implementation introduced in 2010, Adobe spent significant engineering effort trying to approximate those same controls on Windows XP. Today, with Windows 8 just around the corner and Windows XP usage rapidly decreasing, it did not make sense for the Flash Player team to make that same engineering investment for Windows XP. Therefore, we've focused on making Protected Mode for Firefox available on Windows Vista and later.

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  20. Re:How about they release a new 64bit version for by Asic+Eng · · Score: 2

    Load a youtube video, right click, select "Settings", go to the leftmost tab, de-select "Enable Hardware Acceleration". Voila, colours are back to normal.

  21. Re:No Windows Crash then? by icebraining · · Score: 2

    30+ tabs is perfectly manageable. 80+ is too if you use tab groups.

    You need to consider different use cases. For example, just reading through my RSS feed in the morning, I regularly open 30+ tabs with the stuff I want to read; then, when reading each one, I might open a few more (for example, pages linked from the article).

    That said, I use Firefox too on a system with 2GB total and no swap and it runs fine.

  22. Re:How about they release a new 64bit version for by mark_osmd · · Score: 2

    Do you mean faces look blue? Try going into the flash settings and disable the hardware acceleration. But I saw there was a release of flash 11.2.202.236 recently so maybe that's fixed now.

  23. Re:Only Chrome, not even other Pepper implementati by Nimey · · Score: 2

    One wonders if Adobe will revisit that decision if Mozilla changes their minds. Bet you they would.

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