Apparently, Steve Jobs was right when he once said that the Adobe Flash multimedia platform is a real evil. He deliberately refused to support this technology in devices running iOS and, as it turned out now, the decision of the head of Apple was 100% correct, since Flash was thoroughly penetrated by various security holes that allow hackers to do almost anything with devices that support this technology .
Not so long ago, a very unpleasant incident occurred in the IT world. The Italian company Hacking Team, which was engaged in helping the secret services and the governments of various countries to spy on each other, was itself targeted by hackers. It is surprising that the company, created by professional hackers and cybersecurity experts, was defenseless before the first serious attack against him. The attackers managed to steal more than 400 gigabytes of valuable data that shed light on many pretty piquant details. One of the leaks made it possible to understand that the Adobe Flash plugin from the first day of its existence contained exploits that allow hackers to monitor any computer on which it is installed with impunity.
The leaders of the Hacking Team at first tried to justify and even threaten the people who distributed their secret documents on the Web, but then, under public pressure, they admitted their mistakes. Among the clients of the hacker company were special services of such countries as the USA, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia, Egypt and many others. During its existence, the Hacking Team has earned hundreds of millions of dollars helping customers use the holes in computer security of their potential enemies.
Flash technology allowed hackers to get full control over the victim's computer, downloading Trojan applications to it for remote access. At the same time, Adobe, it seems, did not even suspect the existence of such a “backdoor” in the code of its product. Of course, after the publication of classified documents, Adobe realized it and promised to patch all hacker loopholes in the shortest possible time. But it is unlikely to restore the tarnished reputation of the company, famous for its application packages for employees of the creative sphere.
Facebook security head Alex Stamos called on all managers of other large companies to declare war on Flash technology in order to achieve its complete disappearance from the Web as soon as possible. Stazos was joined by his Mozilla Corporation colleague Mark Schmidt, who in his Twitter announced that Firefox will now block any Flash content by default. But if the user wants to risk his security, he will be able to return the ability to view Flash using the settings.
What will happen with Flash technology further is not yet clear. On the one hand, even Adobe itself no longer supports its plug-in for mobile platforms, but on the other hand, after all, millions of games are written on Flash and thousands of websites are created. What will happen to them? Mozilla is currently testing its own Shumway technology, which is capable of rendering Flash content, using only the HTML5 platform. In principle, this approach can solve security problems without losing any content on the web.
The article is based on materials .
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