flash and Firefox crashes

[OldBobjr]

I have been having Flash issues since the flash update a week or so ago..even the Windows update did not improve things.  I have had several suggestions from Firefox, cleaning things and even a reset..and even here on adobe..deleting the flash folder etc..but Firefox still locks up upon exit or change to another flash site mostly..Today it is even worse.  I cannot sign onto zyngagames.com via my facebook account as when you sign it..flash crashes..and locks up Firefox..upon opening again..some thing happens.  I have a new HP laptop and have never had this issue .  W10 64bit and I use Firefox...Any other suggestions. I have sent crash reports several times.  so frustrated.

[epfeif]

Hello,

I am not sure if our problems are related.  But I thought I'd post my issue for comment just to be suret 

I manage about 4500 Windows endpoints for a public school district in Upstate New York.  We have been dealing with difficult issue ever since we deployed FlashPlayer v31.0.0.x to our Windows 10 1803 x64 clients running Firefox ESR v60.2.2 x64 (back in late September of 2018.) We have Firefox configured to launch to our district's homepage of pittsfordschools.org.  It is hosted by Blackboard.com.

In the past, we had successfully deployed and used FlashPlayer v27 -> v30 in this configuration without issue.  When we upgraded to v31, we got widespread reports of Firefox hanging/locking up to the point that it had to be forcibly terminated by the end-user.  We have done considerable internal testing on the issue, and when we found that it only seemed to happen when browsing to our website, we opened a case at blackboard.com.  They have not been able to identify a cause stating they do not offer flash support via their hosting.

Here is what we have observed:

1) This issue has only happened on FlashPlayer v31.0.0.108 and v31.0.0.122

2) It appears to happen with all versions of Firefox and Firefox ESR v60 or higher. (w/Flashplayer v31.x)

3) Interestingly enough...the issue does not consistently always occur on every hardware platform. Systems with Intel Mobile processors manufactured in the last 3 years will produce the issue 9 of 10 times.  Systems with Intel 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation desktop processors may have the issue 1 out of 20 times.

4) Uninstalling Flashplayer or rolling back to v30 or lower CORRECTS the issue every time.

5) This issue has been observed on other Blackboard hosted sites

     www.bcsd.org/domain/18

     www.monroe.edu/

     www.wheatland.k12.ny.us/domain/9

     www.greececsd.org/

6) homedepot.com ---> The issue also happens when using the SEARCH function on homedepot.com

7) Naturally, This does not happen with Microsoft Edge and the Flash plugin supplied via Windows update

I have gone over the Flash administrator's guide with a fine-toothed-comb, looking for anything that was somewhat unique to Flash v31.  I attempted to modify the local mmc.cfg file using each/all of the following settings, but none helped correct the issue.

    EnableInsecureByteArrayShareable=1

    EventJitterMicroseconds=0
    TimerJitterMicroseconds=0

We have taken computers off-site to eliminate our internal network configuration / webfiltering. - but the problem persists.

We have attempted clean OS installs (to eliminate Windows Updates) - to no avail

We have attempted driver updates/rollbacks - no dice

We have attempted BIOS updates on the most affected hardware platforms - no luck

This issue is frustratingly difficult to replicate, but on the proper hardware platform, we can make it break most of the time.  This may be what there have been limited reports of this issue so far.  We feel the issue is likely tied to FlashPlayer, but we also lightly suspect that this might have ties to how Firefox Quantum handles processor threads and hardware acceleration.  But that's a bit of a longshot.

So here I am.

I NEVER post on forums, but this issue is severely impacting or District and I need to find an answer other than uninstalling Flashplayer.

Many Thanks to All

[jeromiec83223024]

I'm on sabbatical for a few weeks, so I'm not going to be around to follow up, but I was checking mail for another reason and saw this come in and felt compelled to respond.

A couple things off the top of my head:

• Adobe doesn't provide direct support for free products, so the forums are your best bet.  The engineering team (including me) watches them pretty closely, so you can't really ask for better access to expertise.
• Start a new thread.  It's easier to give you personalized advice that way, and it doesn't spam all of the other people on this thread.
• Last time I checked, Home Depot didn't use Flash for search. 
  • I'm also not hearing about widespread stability issues with the Firefox ESR.  We work closely with those guys (and have a lot of old colleagues working there), and they're usually very quick to reach out.
  • I believe it's happening, but it's something nuanced and probably specific to your environment.
• Provide some crash dumps and/or hang reports if you can
  • Actual .dmp files are super helpful, as Mozilla's EULA prevents them from sharing dumps on your behalf
  • Firefox crash reports are also good (see about:crashes), particularly if it's truly a hang (this might not generate a dump)
  • Report a Flash Player crash or error <---- here's a good guide

[epfeif]

Appreciated.

Yeah.  I am aware that both Blackboard and HomeDepot do not use flash.  Its a brain-scratcher, no-doubt.  But the observations I have included have been solidly vetted.  I was just hoping one of them might have rung a bell for the experts who shepherd this forum. 

I definitely agree our environment was a potential player.  That is why we conducted a clean OS install off-site and retested - but we got the same results.

I will go back to collecting relevant data in hopes of finding the bugger.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[jeromiec83223024]

Crash and hang dumps should tell us what's up (even if it's not us).  If you can just grab a few from about:crashes on a representative machine, that's the best thing you could do to move this forward...

[Frank Esposito etA]

I've had similar problems over the last few months on several different machines (Win 10 home and professional).  They key to all of mine was that in task manager there would always be a "plugin container" sub-process running under the FF process.  Once that is killed the browser session freed up and I was able to go on.  

The solution for me was to uninstall 64-bit Firefox and replace it with 32-bit Firefox.

Hope that helps.

[jeromiec83223024]

For 64-bit Firefox, Mozilla created a native NPAPI sandbox.  This is actually the way it should be.  For historical reasons, we tacked our own sandbox on to the wrong side of the NPAPI interface for 32-bit sandbox, because an NPAPI sandbox didn't exist in Firefox at the time, and we saw an urgent need for it when looking at a rapidly evolving threat landscape targeting in-process plugins.

The thing is, having a 64-bit memory address space makes it way harder to conduct memory-based attacks, because the address space is sparse.  You typically don't have things bumping up against each other in the same way that you would in 32-bit address space, which makes security issues related to small out of bounds memory accesses much less reliable.

Our 32-bit sandbox is more mature and a little more permissive to Flash, but you lose out on the security advantages of running in a 64-bit memory space, which is pretty important holistically for both Flash and JavaScript security.

If it were me, I'd prefer the 64-bit Firefox ESR, or I'd use another 64-bit browser that works well, particularly if I was doing anything sensitive during that browsing session.