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New Zero-Day Flash Bug Affects Windows, OS X, and Linux Computers
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the Kaspersky Lab have uncovered a zero-day Adobe Flash vulnerability that affects Windows, OS X, and Linux. 'While the exploit Kaspersky observed attacked only computers running Microsoft Windows, the underlying flaw, which is formally categorized as CVE-2014-1776 and resides in a Flash component known as the Pixel Bender, is present in the Adobe application built for OS X and Linux machines as well.' Adobe has reportedly patched the bug for all platforms. Researchers first detected the bug from attacks performed on seven Syrian computers. The attacks seem to have been hosted on the Syrian Ministry of Justice website, which has led to speculation that these are state-sponsored vulnerability exploits. This speculation is further supported by evidence that one of the exploits was 'designed to target computers that have the Cisco Systems MeetingPlace Express Add-In version 5x0 installed. The app is used to view documents and images during Web conferences.'"
flash is equally bad on all platforms web guys please stop using it.
Apples cant never get no fuckin visruses! What are you stoopid!
...Shumway. Sometimes it has an advantage to run a VM in a VM.
Might as well claim you found brown in poop.
I never installed flash and I rarely find web pages that require it. I've noticed a slow migration away from it as well. One or twice a year I check some websites that required flash in the past and some no longer do so. YMMV.
It does not seem that difficult to go without flash and it is getting easier every day.
I deliberately do not install Flash on my computers _and_ I deliberately choose to not install any of the third-party work-alikes.
If the content owner only publishes content in a SWF, it is not worth my bother to look at it. Okay, I can't view video clips in Facebook, but if it is an embedded youtube video, usually I can view it just fine by going to youtube's website.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
Well on the positive side it is refreshing to see someone writing portable code. :-)
- or should be - long live the open alts.
I'm not a Flash developer, so I'm asking very seriously: is there a compelling reason to keep using Flash in 2014? For the past several years, the only notable things associated with this technology have been major security holes.
http://i.imgur.com/TNz9k9G.jpg
I just reinstalled my OS a few weeks ago and never reinstalled flash. Despite a profuse amount of websurfing and watching videos here and there, I haven't needed flash yet.
Fewer annoying, moving, sound-producing site navigation controls, better battery life on my laptop when watching videos, and fewer horrible security vulnerabilities to worry about! Dumping Flash is something I should have done long ago!
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I'm scared of that site...
Sure, it might have been exploited while it was a zero-day bug but by the time it made it to /., it was an EX-zero-day bug.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
http://bombermine.clay.io/
As unpopular as it is to say here on HTML-5-worshiping Slashdot, it's true. Flash can still do a lot of things that are either impossible on other platforms, or which suck on other platforms. Try implementing the average Flash game in HTML 5 (can't do it at all) or Java (can do it, but it will bring your system to a crawl) sometime.
Don't shoot the messenger just because you wish the message weren't true.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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I have lots of 0days for that operating system
everyone please stop using linux
Cookie Clicker is perfectly playable with Flash Player turned off.
So why are the animated series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, The Amazing World of Gumball, Peep and the Big Wide World, and several others made in Flash?
I know who is playing games: you. By saying a completely stupid sentence but putting it into a context where it's believable. The context being:
Very cool setup: "Name me a better way you would rather be tortured to death." Then you conclude with "death of a thousand cuts is the most pleasant experience a human can have."
Fine, but let's be clear: Flash is basically worthless as a platform. It's only when you make up ridiculous situations that nobody wants to have anything to do with, that it starts to become worth talking about. Yet you will NEVER, as a user, want to be in that situation, because it's gauranteed to totally suck and there was never a time when it didn't suck.
What is the best way to fuck our visitors? Flash! You're right: it's true.
I just, like many others, wish someone would actually fucking *elaborate* on *concrete* *technical* hurdles of HTML5.
HTML5 has no guaranteed audio or video codec. Some browsers support only free codecs from Xiph and On2, others only patented codecs from Dolby and MPEG-LA. HTML5 implementations in use provide no consistent way for the application to request access to the camera and microphone. Neither IE nor Safari implements the Stream API at all, and Firefox and Chrome implement prefixed (that is, proprietary) versions of it. And on my laptop in Firefox 28, this particle system runs at 20 fps in Flash, 9 fps in HTML5 Canvas, and 5 fps in SVG. Unlike HTML5 JavaScript, ActionScript has static typing and class-style inheritance, and some developers prefer those. Finally, copies of old versions of Flash for making vector animations are sold on the secondary market; Edge Animate is available only on a rental basis through Creative Cloud. I'd be interested to see what workarounds you recommend for these.
I always ask about the technology needed to drive the online banking and I've found that most banks are usable without any flash/java/silverlight/et cetera (Yes, I'm a geek. You're on Slashdot). If the person opening your account doesn't know (likely), they at least will helpfully point out that you can cancel and close your account within the first week or so.
The only bank account I've ever had that has required flash for online access was with KEB (Korea Exchange Bank). In this case, you're right, it was very much something trivial and unneeded.
The output we see isn't in flash, it's just video.
And in an era of bandwidth caps not keeping up with advances in monitor resolutions, this transmission as video is an order of magnitude inefficient in bitrate. Why is it beneficial in the long run to just accept this gross inefficiency?
The link you posted says it's fallacious to point out that SOMETHING is worse, that the thing under discussion isn't the WORST choice. That's a mistake because we should be looking for the BEST choice, not merely avoiding the worst one.
GP is arguing that Flash is the BEST choice in some scenarios, that ALL options are worse. That's fundamentally different from arguing that SOME options are worse. GP's argument is perfectly logical. Whether or not all of the alternatives actually ARE worse is another question, of course.
I CAN program in Flash, but I've never CHOSEN Flash when the choice was mine.
And websites offering video are charging extra for access from phones and tablets. Hulu requires a subscription for mobile access, as does video on The Escapist.
If the content owner only publishes content in a SWF, it is not worth my bother to look at it.
Animutations and other vector animations are usually much smaller in their original SWF than they are when transcoded to MPEG-4 or WebM video. In this era of monthly caps, rendering to pixels can't always compete with the bandwidth efficiency of vectors. You're not going to get, say, "We Drink Ritalin" by Robinson Wilburn (parody fan video for the song "Hot Limit" by John Desire, which incidentally introduced me to DDR) as small in MP4 as it is in SWF, probably not even with H.266 when it does exist.
Okay, I can't view video clips in Facebook, but if it is an embedded youtube video, usually I can view it just fine by going to youtube's website.
If the video has ads or claims, you'll likely get "Please install Adobe Flash Player to watch this video" with a desktop UA or "The content owner has not made this video available on mobile" with a mobile UA.
Starting in April 2012, most new systems had Linux pre-installed. Not coincidentally, that same year most new systems were pocket sized.
Do common video decoding ICs even support WebM yet? Transmit as WebM or transmit as SWF, either way the CPU will be involved in decoding it.
Right, because there's never critical vulnerabilities in widely-used open source software. I mean, anything as sensitive as, say, an SSL library would obviously be thoroughly tested and code reviewed to prevent any kind of trivially exploitable error that looks like something a CS freshman student might make. Thank goodness neither OpenSSL nor GnuTLS are required by any common free software, for example...
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
within Mozilla, you are a better man than I.
I'm safe on this one.
HTML5 vector animation has three drawbacks: Speed The Flash version of this Flash vs. SVG benchmark runs at 22-23 fps on a laptop with an Atom N450 CPU, which is nearly four times the speed of SVG (6 fps) in Firefox 29 on the same laptop. Set quality to low and it shoots up to 31-32 fps. Tools The page you linked on creativedroplets.com mentions Edge Animate. But second-hand copies of old versions of Flash are widely available, while Edge Animate is available only by subscription. Content A lot of authors of existing SWF vector animations, such as popular videos on Newgrounds, Dagobah, and Albino Blacksheep, either are no longer contactable or lack the time, tools, and inclination to convert their old productions to HTML5.
The summary doesn't say.
Slashdot summary says it is CVE-2014-1776 which is the IE 0-day. The Kaspersky article says it is CVE-2014-0515 for the Flash 0-day. Come on editors. I guess you can blame the Ars article but I'd expect the editors to at least read the source article.
There is a non-trivial demand for highly interactive stuff on the web. You may not be interested in that, but many people are and thus many developers are. Well, only Flash really does anything approaching a competent job of that. If you want to make something like a game, that runs on all the major browsers and all the major platforms, Flash can do that. Anything else, it is a crap shoot.
For example I remember when the HTML5 Angry Birds came out. Ok, interesting, I'd like to see that. In Chrome, it works more or less flawlessly, since that's what it was made for. It did seem to randomly 'asplode a couple times though. Firefox was nice and stable and everything seemed to work, but slow. The framerate was noticeably jerky. IE worked solid and was smooth as could be... but had no sound.
This is all on Windows, never mind how things would be on OS-X. Not precisely something that gives a lot of confidence in HTML5.
Also there is the simple matter of time. You might be able to make an HTML5 game work as well as a Flash one, if you spent enough time making a port for each browser on each platform. Thing is, that takes a lot of developer time and thus money. You target Flash just once, and it works.
Also the tools for Flash can make development, particularly the graphics and animation part, quite easy.
So if something comes along that does a good job replacing it, something that is well supported by browsers and you really can do easy development in, then sure I expect people will start using it.
I suggest you get a new laptop.
Except for the Surface Pro, other 10" products I've seen are also Atom based. Or has Atom improved dramatically in the past four years?
The tools will come
That doesn't help if you want to deliver something now, not years later after the tools have come.
Your quote of a dollar amount for the processor alone implies it's a home-built desktop PC. My numbers would probably be much better too on a full-size desktop PC as opposed to a subnotebook or tablet.
Two words:
1) Adobe
2) Flash
The market should have killed both clowns long, long ago. They should be SUED into oblivion in a world-wide class action by every computer-savvy person willing to sign up.
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