Security News > 2021 > January > That's it. It's over. It's really over. From today, Adobe Flash Player no longer works. We're free. We can just leave

The image is clickable and leads to Adobe's Flash Player EOL General Information Page where netizens are advised to uninstall Flash and fire it into the heart of the Sun.

That page repeats Adobe's assertions that the likes of HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly "Have continually matured over the years and serve as viable alternatives for Flash content." Throw in the fact that "Major browser vendors are integrating these open standards into their browsers and deprecating most other plugins," and Adobe is content to let Flash become an ex-plugin.

More specifically, what's happened is that Adobe snuck a logic bomb into its Flash software some releases ago that activates on January 12, and causes the code to refuse to render any more content from that date.

Adobe has also removed previous versions from its site, and "Strongly recommends all users immediately uninstall Flash Player to help protect their systems."

Macromedia started to distribute the Flash plugin for the web browsers of the mid-1990s, and it took off as publishers and users alike looked for content that offered more interactivity than was possible with early versions of HTML. By the early 2000s, Flash was all-but-required to experience the modern web of the day.

After years of assaults, and the rise of alternatives, Adobe announced the demise of Flash in July 2017, saying support will be dropped on December 31, 2020.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/01/12/flash_is_dead/