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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."

10 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. 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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      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    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

  3. 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.

  4. 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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    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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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    What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)