Adobe Ends Flash Player; Keep On Top Of Patches Till 2020
By: Jim Stickley and Tina Davis
July 26, 2017
It’s finally here; the end of a vulnerability-filled era. Adobe has announced that with support from its partners, including Microsoft, Apple, Google, Firefox, and others, it will stop supporting Adobe Flash Player. While it has certainly had it issues throughout its tenure, it has given us some good services including cool games and websites. No need to be sorry or to panic, however. Adobe will still support it until the latter part of 2020.
This does not mean that you can get lazy and forget about it. It is likely that additional vulnerabilities will be found over the next three years and Adobe pledged to continue to issue patches for them. So, be sure to keep updating your version as soon as any patches or versions are released for your products.
Adobe is encouraging content-creators to use the other available formats going forward in preparation for the end-of-life. These formats, such as HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly have been in use already. In some cases, you may not even notice a change from Flash.
Flash Player has been riddled with vulnerabilities since the beginning. It is frequently used by hackers to trick users into installing malware on their systems. Keep in mind that any update you may see pop up on your screen going forward should be checked and rechecked for legitimacy before approving an installation. Instead of clicking the affirmative option in any pop-up dialogue, just close it out by clicking the negative option or preferably, clicking on the “x” to close it. Then, go directly to Adobe’s site to confirm that a new patch was indeed released for your version and install it from there.
Microsoft will likely disable Flash Player in Edge and Internet Explorer by the end of 2019. However, the others have stated that they will continue support until it officially is put to rest.