Plug-in Failed and Flash Player plug-in crash loading from webview in MacOS Mojave, Catalina Beta 8

Report · Sep 20, 2019

Are others experiencing a flash player plug-in crash in WebKitPluginHost?

Our application uses a WebView in the WebKit framework to load an HTML file which loads an SWF file. When doing this, there is a crash in WebKitPluginHost for the Marcomedia Flash Player Plug-in. I see this in the log:

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (Code Signature Invalid

Termination Reason: Namespace CODESIGNING, Code 0x2

If I turn off System Integrity Protection (SIP) it works.

Are others experiencing this problem and if so does Adobe know about it and plan to fix it? It seems like the plug-in does not have proper signing or notarization.

Report · Sep 23, 2019

Ran this:

codesign --verify --deep --verbose "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash Player.plugin" /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash

Player.plugin

a sealed resource is missing or invalid In subcomponent: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash Player.plugin/Contents/PlugIns/FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin

file added: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash Player.plugin/Contents/PlugIns/FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin/Contents/Resources/plugin.vch

Removed plugin.vch.

Codesignature was then valid but still wouldn't work. So I don't think the problem is the code signature. Maybe it needs notarized.

Report · Sep 23, 2019

We've definitely been doing a lot of notarization work. We shipped a beta build yesterday. Are you seeing this problem there?

Report · Sep 24, 2019

I tried the Flash Player beta dated Sept. 24, 2019. It still crashes but wtih an SIGABRT excetption, abort() called instead. I think that is progress. I have a bug report opened here: 'https://tracker.adobe.com/#/view/FP-4199039'.

Report · Sep 27, 2019

Fantastic, thanks. Can you share an executable that reproduces this? We don't really test or support the embedded plug-in use-case (Adobe AIR was the supported path for desktop application development using Flash), but we know that people do it, and we try to keep it working where that's feasible.

Report · Sep 27, 2019

Here is a zip archive that contains the exe and the source code:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/obfommd9ebbuelz/TestWebViewLoadFlashPlugIn-SIGABRT-2019-09-27%2017-15-47.z...

When I run it on Mojave or Catalina with the Flash Player Beta (32.0.0.269) installed, I get the SIGABRT crash.

We did consider converting our SWFs to AIR applications, but we want to move to HTML 5 implementations in the future and would rather spend our time doing that. We hope that by the time Catalina releases, Flash Player plug-in in a WebView will work.

Thanks for looking into this.

Report · Oct 23, 2019

I have updated my bug tracker case: https://tracker.adobe.com/#/view/FP-4199039.

The crash still happens with release 32.0.0.270.

Report · Nov 15, 2019

I just tested with version 32.0.0.293 released Nov. 13, 2019 and it still crashes with:

EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)

abort() called.

See the linked bug tracker case in my previous reply for the crash log and an app that reproduces the problem, including source.

Report · Dec 13, 2019

The crash is still happening with version 32.0.0.303.

Report · Jan 15, 2020

Anyone find a fix for this in Catalina yet? I'd like to load a local site that uses flash with my own little browser.

Report · Feb 04, 2020

The SIGABRT crash is still happening with version 32.0.0.321.

Report · Mar 02, 2020

From the bug comments:

We worked on this issue and discussed it with Apple Engineering. Their conclusion was that the issue is probably in the WebView code but they require a DTS incident to investigate further: <https://developer.apple.com/support/technical/>.

We can provide you with a symbolicated crash report if you need one.

They also pointed out that the WebView has been deprecated since 2017 and, as with any other Deprecated Technologies, only critical bugs would be fixed, and considering the planned obsolescence of the plugin, it's doubtful that it would be.

We verified that the Flash Player plugin loads correctly and runs successfully in the WkWebView. May we know why you still need to use the WebView?

Furthermore, the WebView, as well as the WKWebView, loads the Flash Player plugin from /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/, and it's doubtful that it will continue to be present, or working if present, after December 31st 2020.

Report · Mar 02, 2020

[removing double-post]

Report · Mar 03, 2020

It seemed that wkwebview would not even try to load the plug-in. Do you have a sample app that uses wkwebview and loads the flash player plug-in?

Report · Mar 04, 2020

No. Adobe supports the "Flash Player running as a browser plug-in" use-case. Adobe AIR was the supported path for building desktop applications using Flash technology. (That solution can still be licensed from our technology partner Harman: https://airsdk.harman.com/)

In this instance, the issue is fallout from an intentional MacOS change, and with Flash Player reaching EOL in 2020, making a large engineering investment in the hope of finding a workaround for an off-book use case is lower priority than the active work. It's unlikely that we'll get to this in a satisfactory timeframe. It's also incredibly unlikey that Apple would invest engineering resources to enable Flash for this use-case, but you're welcome to open a case with them to report the breakage.

My recommendation would be to accelerate your investment to remove your Flash dependency, and/or roll back to MacOS 10.14 until you can make that change.

Report · Mar 08, 2020

Really?