Adobe Flash availability after 2020?

[antbal]

It's been known Adobe terminates flash support by end of 2020, however companies are interested what happens after 2020 - is it possible still to run Flash in major browsers, just without support?  Asking to have plan B if companies won't finish migration by end of 2020, and what are possible workarounds?

Microsoft support told that it depends on Adobe, if they keep flash still available.

thanks!

[Robert Mc Dowell]

If Adobe cannot finance my 20 years and 6 millions line of  Actionscript2/3 code to  Javascript so yes I support it.

[Alexei5D13]

What happen if some enterprise has FLASH in management component of some important hardware, and suddenly their dashboard with all buttons etc stops working on Jabuary 1 2021, then their factory blast and damage the whole city around? How much Adobe will pay? Notice that the whole thing can be INSIDE locked network so no any security problems or concerns exist there.

I can understand 'we do not support application anymore', I can understand 'we do not support auto play'. I can even understand 'you must confirm list of legal adobe able sites manually'. But kill switch... it is outside of my understanding. What if this kill switch kill something like refinary system, or railroad management system, or in our case it will kill management dashboard of Vmware backup systems and of VMware management system (upgrade? Such process in locked production environments may take years if not more). 

They created bomb to themselves. I found 3 easy ways to work it all around (firefox_esr + white list; linux firefox_esr + linux adobe - no kill switch exist in linux version; running windows XP - no kill switch exist in XP version and no 'remove adobe plugin' in XP browsers as they all are not updated anymore - and I can run XP in virtual env easily) but any serios enterprise with industrial adobe usage have a great choice - stop browser and OS updates (it opens other problems) or run all upgrades and lost very important system components and it will happen on New year day when no IT people are available. I am waiting for the great show, next January. 

[Sean5CCD]

Adobe are a bunch of idiots.  If they choose to kill it, I will just use my work around and use my unsupported browsers, which still work just like the supported browsers thanks to independet and intellegent programmers in the world who arent owned by corporate america, and use flash anyway.  A new internet is forming.  It'll remember the internet is just servers with webpages and IP addresses.  If you want to use the old flash, its out there, go use it and integrate it into your private webserver and webpage, and use it all you want.  They cant remove everything just make it difficult.  The big issue is that everyone rents webservers and those webservers are going to kill the code on their servers and thats why your flash is going to die.  You have to find a way to integrate your flash into your own webserver and private website.  That was the old way, websites weren't YAHOO GOOGLE ESPN AMAZON WALMART and controlled on a server leased by google or some other webservice company to you, it was you hosted the website off your internet and off your computer or server at home.

[AlCatSplat]

Why would you make a Flash game if you knew that Adobe is discontinuing Flash?

[TheJamesLong]

Well then, as a fellow web developer, you're green behind the ears and ought to keep your fat mouth shut. We've got decades of code invested in Adobe Flash, you don't turn that kind of train around, not even in three years. There are tens of thousands of flash software packages out there. Some of them for hardware that hasn't been produced or supported for over a decade. You kill flash, you kill untold 10's of thousands of seperate pieces of flash, from silly little games, to banking software, weather and space scientific analysis utilities.. Any spectrum you can imagine. Literally anything.. somebody somewhere in the last few decades took advantage of the ease of use of flash to plug a little hole where some little app (or big app) was needed.

..and you propose to throw one little switch and pull all of those plugs out at the same time. O.o

You kill flash, you create tens of thousands of little holes in the timeline spectrum of computing. tens of thousands of little holes that developers abandoned decades ago.

A few years ago, Microsoft grudgingly admitted that the Windows codebase was a flat mess. They tried to reverse engineer it to try to 'back the train down the tracks' and fix some things. That's when they discovered that they had failed to maintain their data integrity and viability, and realized that it was utterly impossible to reverse engineer Windows. That's when Bill Gates hisself threw up his hands and retired.

Yeah, it's that bad.

..and now.. you propose to forcible throw a kill switch and create tens of thousands of gaps in the data integrity and viability of an entire programming platform.

Genius. Just throw a can of gasoline and a mathc on it while you're at it.
#BurnItDown

[Diregames]

as another fellow developer who was making a game for flash 3 days ago. i am too hurt by the shutdown of adobe flash. and from diffrent sources, they are saying that it is because "webGL and HTML are maturing" and "flash truely cannot continue with growing tools like html" like cmon adobe, shut the f-ck up. 

say for instance the game Mario for the NES can be used as an example and a moral. Super Mario is an old nes game that was popular for it's time. when it got old, did we stop using it? NO! did nintendo trash the game and the whole nes? F-CK NO!!! Mario is a game still loved by many people and is a part engraved in our childhood.

and so it flash.

to take away NOT ONLY MY WORK, BUT THE WORK OF SO MANY OTHERS IS ABSURD AND DESERVES TO BE BOYCOTTED IMMEDITELY!! There are so many people signing petitions on Change.org to keep this thing alive and you are turning a blind eye to the many people who are BEGGING TO SAVE ADOBE FLASH! LIKE SQUARE UP ADOBE!

you wanna know how mad this makes me? i wanna have a internet-wide boycott for deleting a part of my past and my future. i wanna get a bunch of people together to stop paying for adobe animate and photoshop and all of the products untill YOU STOP!

we man up and stand up for adobe flash. shut up and shut down the process.
keep adobe flash alive

[AlCatSplat]

Diregames, why would you make a Flash game if you knew that Adobe is discontinuing Flash?

[Diregames]

Newgrounds and other sites do have alternatives to allow flash games to
still play like the new "newgrounds player" and plus i could just switch
the export to HTML5 thanks to the stupid choice of the adobe group.

[jeromiec83223024 · Accepted solution]

Our support partner Harman can work with you on possible options: 

https://services.harman.com/partners/adobe

[Wayne5FDF]

If Harman is your partner in all except China.  Who has distribution rights post 2020 in China 

[alfredcertain]

How much can cost the Harman solution? The Veriskope solution (another Adobe Partner similar to Harman) starts on $10.000 and we must paid $1.000 just for testing if its viable for our app.

[Farley0D4D]

You better have a wallet full of money if you plan on talking with Harman!  They are NOT a realistic, cost effective option for smaller organizations that need a temporary fix or workaround.

And Adobe could be MUCH more helpful by providing a step by step "how to" lockdown Flash.  As opposed to just offeroing a bunch of links and FAQ's and an Administrators Guide.  I personally have spent many hours trying to figure this out and have not been successful yet.

Shame on Adobe for treating the user comuniyt like this!  Yes, they did give 3 years notice, but in case they haven't noticed, there is a worldwide pandemic and many organizations have had to spend a lot of time supporting work from home staff. 

[TheJamesLong]

Does the Harmon solution work on all supported Linux Platforms? How about BSD? Solaris? LAMP servers?

..No?

How about old versions? Flash was introduced when, around Win3.11, or was it Win95, first edition?

How about older systems like Novell Netware and HP UNIX??

BECAUSE I'VE STILL GOT CLIENTS DEPENDANT ON ALL OF THE ABOVE!!!

(Rhetorical question, I've already read the other responses.) Is Harmon providing this service cheap/free, so it's accassible to the masses who AREN'T corporate entities with a fat azz check book to 'take care of it'? How about so that it's accissible to VAR and tech people SUPPORTING those clients and systems??

NO??

@&^#%$!&^#$!!!!!

Adobe.. before you even think about responding to THIS reply.. I demand you respond to my other post above. My inbox has been flooded with people liking that post and dropping awards. Your veritible silence on the subject is just plain disrespectful to those of us who have stood by your side for decades now.

[Alexei5D13]

You do not understand the situation. There are thousands systems which requires flash in browser for management purpose and these systems can not and will not be upgraded or replaced. So we NEED flash in browsers for the next 10 years, at least, If MS or CHROME or FF will drop it then we will keep Windows XP and Windows 7 and FF with upgrades blocked and run it anyway.

Smart thing could be to make it plug in and by default restrict to INTRANET only as it is, in 99% cases, on private IP. But it can not be eliminated as hardware and softwzare whoch requires it can not be upgraded or upgrades are nit reqsonable. If browsers used on public INTERNET this action could be OK but they are used in internal systems so if browser designefrs wsnts to stop it from working then admins just will keep unpatched systems and browsers for the next 10 years for the management purpose (as I keep Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 and Windows XP because of many hardware systems can be used from these systems only).

SO it is not better security; it is worst security as we are forced to block updates (I already blocked updates on a few virtual systems so to prevent surpises like SSLv3 drop - we have. again, few systems which requires SSLv3 support) and the same will happens with flash - old systems will be frozen and used without updates at all (I can froze updates in windows10 too) The reason is that risk to lost ability to manage systems (older SAN storages, older console cards and so on) is too serious and all these systems arte protected inside sandbox zones so security is not immediate concern.

(Examples - Vmware 5.5 VC, VMware 6.5 VC, VMware VDP, few SAN systems, a lot actually. World is much more complex vs just 'geeks on Internet who play games'.)

[Guest]

Adobe announced end of life for flash in 2012, they gave plenty of warning
and reminders along the way. Heck, talk about the potential phasing out
started I 2009!

[Emma5EF3]

AFAIK, Adobe added a time bomb in the plugin, which means Flash will stop working starting January 1st, 2021...

[Alexei5D13]

Then we will hack plugin and remove time bomb. Or change time to 2010 year.

As I said, we need flash plug in for the next 10 years, and it is not
optional. So we will run next 10 years, it no matter what Adiobe, MS and
others will do.

[Alexei5D13]

I made research.

1) Adobe WILL NOT stop working on 1 January 2021. It will enable WhiteList (it can be enabled explicitly now) but will work for white-listed URL-s. And yes, by default, it will not work (I tested it by changinbg date to 2022).

2) There is enterprise FireFox FireFox esr which likely will continue to support adobe plugin.

3) You can download full adobe installation file (not default one wich download from Adobe); it is documented in 'troubleshooting' in the end.

All together allows to use adobe for the internal sites  which requires it. Things are not as bad as they are presented. Chrome lost it but Chrome is known by paranoidal decisions (do you know that if chrome refuse to open some web page for security reasons, you can enforce it to one it by enterinbg magical phrase? They have a lot of such examples). 

Good idea is to block adobe from running in embedded objects (adv video etc); but it must be made available for enterprise purposes next 5 - 10 years at least, and better if it is done by Adobe itself and not by nameless hackers. As people will need it and will use it. Whitelist and enterprise browser , and this is a solution. 

[alfredcertain]

Hi,

I am interested into this too, as I'm working on migrating Flex apps, but I need to know if there is a way to keep using my current flex apps after Dec 31, 2020. I would appreciate if you can share more details about your research and the options we have to keep using Flash Player on 2021.
Thanks !

[Sébastien5C08]

Hey Alexei, thanks for the investigations and sharing it here.

However, can you elaborate on the whitelist based approach? How do you update this whitelist? I'd like to make some testing.

thanks for your help.

Sebastien.

[Alexei5D13]

Check adobe documentation. IT is done manually by editing mms.conf file
somewhere in the system.

To test
- remove system (Virtual VM of course) from domain - you can;t change time
when system is in domain (except if you use local account, and even this is
not guaranteed)
- install FF sre and disable it's updates (it can be done by registry, and
it is important, except if Mozilla and Adobe confirm clearly that they will
support Adobe in FF sre for next 10 years)
- try flash, see that it should stop working
- edit file. From Adobe: ' Full details can be found in our Flash Player
Administration guide
(see ‘Enterprise
Enablement’ section). '
- try again, now it should work.
- change time back

- I downloaded and saved adobe installation files (bigger ones, 23 MB,
small ones download from adobe and will not work)
- do the same with FF sre installation - have full installation copy
available.

As an alternative, I found that my older Windows XP VM-s has non
self-killing adobe and has FF with updates do not happen anymore, so it is
very stable environment 

[Aditya5E76]

Hi Alexei5D13,

I've been following this article and found it very informative.

We would also like to implement the solution as you've advised.

We began by downloading Firefox ESR (78.4) but it seems it didnt come with flash player by default.

We couldnt either install it as a plugin since it doesnt appear in Plugins directory

Would you know the latest ESR version that came with flash plugin?

Thanks,

Aditya

[_maria_]

Mozilla has never embedded Flash Player plugin in the browser. No version of Firefox will "come with flash player by default."

[Aditya5E76]

Hi _maria_

Thanks for your reply.

But I'm not able to find flash as an add-ons to be installed either

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/search/?q=flash&platform=WINNT&appver=78.4.1

When i run a website hosting flash content, I can;t see any icon that would prompt be to install flash or even mention that flash is not available.

Do I need to install flash separately?

[_maria_]

Yes, you need to install Flash Player NPAPI plugin for Firefox from https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer.  If you have installed Flash Player NPAPI plugin and it's not displaying in Add-ons > Plugins, it's a Mozialla/Firefox issue, not Flash Player.