Gone In A Flash: Microsoft Warns Edge Users Of Certain Doom For Adobe’s Most Hated Product
There was one a time when Adobe Flash ruled the internet, providing everything from interactive content for websites, to addictive online games, to powering online ads. Its quick rise in popularity meant that it was also a frequent target for malicious content, and many malware writers used Flash to deliver disastrous payloads to hundreds of millions of PCs over the years.
Couple that with poor performance on some machines, Adobe’s slowness to resolving security issues, and the rise of HMTL5, Flash has been relegated [mostly] to an afterthought with most modern browsers (Adobe itself announced back in 2017 that it would no longer support Flash by the end of 2020).
Microsoft goes on to say that Windows Update support for Adobe Flash Player will cease after December 2020. The company takes it a step further, writing, “Beginning in January 2021, Adobe Flash Player will be disabled by default and all versions older than KB4561600 released in June 2020 will be blocked. Downloadable resources related to Adobe Flash Player that are hosted on Microsoft websites will no longer be available.”
While disabling Flash is an admirable step, some people want all traces of the software removed from their systems. In this case, a new executable will be made available direct from Microsoft that will remove the offending software.
It's a shame that it's taking this long to completely rid the world of Flash, but we're glad to hear that Microsoft along with competitors like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox have also committed to eradicate the cockroach of the software world.
