Flash haters, rejoice! Microsoft releases tool to let you nuke Adobe's security horror before support ends

If you'd like to exact righteous vengeance on Adobe's Flash, Microsoft has given us all a tool to expunge the software from Windows ahead of time, to some degree. Adobe announced the death of Flash in July 2017 after admitting the software had been overtaken by open standards. Left unsaid was that apps implementing those open …

[Maelstorm]

SWF for Single White Female?

It almost sounds like a ploy on a dating site. In all seriousness though, it stands to reason that something will break. It always does. The question is can one live without the program that broke? Developers have had 3 years to update their code to a different environment. The plus side is no more flash based security bugs and cookies to track you everywhere you go. On the down side, people's flash based porn collection will go into the bit bucket. And with that, I'll grab my coat and exit, stage right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: SWF for Single White Female?

I've been actively avoiding the thing since it was called ShockWave Flash. It's not all Adobe's fault, but they must shoulder the burden of perpetuating the abomination.

Developers have had far more than 3 years to escape the flash ecosystem. Personally the last flash creation I made was around 20 years ago. Back then it was pretty much the only way to include video on a webpage.

[stiine]

Re: SWF for Single White Female?

For them and all of the great flash games from the past.... I have a stand-alone flash player.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: SWF for Single White Female?

> it stands to reason that something will break. It always does

At my current gig, that'll be all the mandatory training - those training systems just love flash. What's worse is it's all from a 3rd party and externally hosted. No security issues there.

> The question is can one live without the program that broke?

No more mindless refresher courses on anti money laundering? I think I'll survive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: SWF for Single White Female?

A disk search on *.swf will show files that are probably flash videos - as a confidence check in removing that capability.

[haiku]

MS late to the party

Adobe gave me the option to remove Flash - on my Windows 7 box, conspicuously ignored by Microsoft - last month

[DS999]

Re: MS late to the party

Yep I noticed that on my mom's Windows 7 PC last weekend when I set up a new printer for her, and removed it while I was waiting for the printer software to download.

[redpawn]

Flash, You'll be Missed

NOT!!! Nice of Adobe to blame standards compliant software for the failure of code so bad only outlaws and malware riddled porn sites could love.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now for an app that will remove WINDOWS...

[Duncan Macdonald]

App

FORMAT C: /Y

[Ochib]

Re: App

DISKPART just to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: App

DISKPART just to be sure

Ah yes, the "nuke the entire site from orbit" option...

[Anonymous Coward]

"was that those open standards were not sources of endless bugs and security risks"

No? How many bugs we've see in media libraries, browsers, javascript engines, web frameworks and their plug-ins?

[ThomH]

Re: "was that those open standards were not sources of endless bugs and security risks"

Expected return is probability multiplied by value.

What is the expected return from discovering a bug in a media library, browser, JavaScript engine, web framework or plug-in given that all are so numerous that neither of us can be bothered bogging ourselves down in listing them?

During its imperial phase, what was the expected return from discovering a bug in Adobe Flash, the single failure point propagated across so many platforms and browsers?

[Danny 2]

Flash! Bang! Wallop!

(Courtesy of England's first teen idol and rock'n'roll star, Tommy Steele, Instagram-ready in 1956.)

All lined up in a wedding group

'Ere we are for a photograph

We're all dressed up in a morning suit

All trying hard not to laugh

Since the early caveman in his fur

Took a trip to Gretna Green

There's always been a photographer

To record the 'appy scene

'Old it, flash, bang, wallop, what a picture

[LenG]

The curse of flash

OK, who's the joker?

I clicked on the link to read the advisory. Then I hit the back button ... again and again and again. Turned out I had 10 backlinks before I reached El Reg.

The MS article was harder to get rid off than Flash!

[J.G.Harston]

Re: The curse of flash

I've noticed that happening more and more, my suspicion is that it's a way to force people to stay on a website, on first loading the page it redirects to itself multiple times, so filling the 'Back' list with the same page. I end up menuing on Back and finding the real previous page from the list.

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

On Windows 7, you didn't have to have Flash installed. Windows 8 was, I think, the same.

On Windows 10, on the other hand, it came bundled with the system and wouldn't let you remove it*. A strange decision and I really have no idea why they did that. Better late than never, I suppose, but it's Microsoft's habit - never fix a bug until users have been screaming about it for eighteen months.

* Various workarounds existed, but they usually either broke Windows Update in some way or another, or made it nag you forever, which is more or less the same thing in my book.

[steviebuk]

All grab those Flash games while you can. Someone has released a MASSIVE torrent of them all in an attempt to preserve their history.

Back in 2008 we used to play a kerbab van game at work when bored. You had to server people quickly at lunch. Was actually quite good for a short play.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeh, everyone is forgetting that for nearly a decade Flash/Shockwave was all we had for browser games. It's true that Adobe, as always and forever, didn't care about improving security or performance after buying Macromedia. However, even left in that perpetual sluggish state, it was all there was and it did work.

There's a lot of hate for Flash in its later years but in its early years, it literally had 0% competition and was left on its own as the only easy method of interactive webpages (although the 100% Flash based webpage was always a horrible look). Anyhow, I'm not sure how things would of turned out it Flash hadn't trailblazed all those years. Maybe those who rightfully hate Adobe should still give thanks to Macromedia.

[ThomH]

I guess Adobe bought Flash too early and with insufficient attention to give it the PageMaker treatment — throw out a few maintenance releases and work rapidly on the greenfield replacement. I don't really know how it's doing nowadays but InDesign was a very good thing twenty years ago. Quark certainly didn't see it coming.

Alas that is the only example I can think of in which Adobe didn't just cling on desperately to an existing codebase.

[steviebuk]

Fantastic Contraption, the original Flash version is one we played a lot as it was actually good.

[Howard Sway]

"After this update has been applied, this update cannot be uninstalled."

The rock solid, 100% reliability of all previous updates released by Microsoft surely prove that this is a great idea.

Alternatively they could finally get the message into their concrete skulls that you ALWAYS need a way of rolling back in case of unforseen problems. But I don't think that good technical practices can ever overcome the culture of corporate arrogance within that company.

[Sleep deprived]

Does my Win10 laptop have Flash?

I bought a Win10 Pro laptop this summer and in the Control Panel/Programs, I don't see Flash. And if I did, what would prevent me from removing it? Is a Microsoft tool required for that?

[Sleep deprived]

Re: Does my Win10 laptop have Flash?

I just checked with Adobe's Flash test page and it's not installed.

[Pen-y-gors]

Win 10 ver 2004?

That's what I'm running and it isn't in the list of available updates.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Win 10 ver 2004?

You need the version for 1903 or later, either x86 (32bit) or x64 (64bit).

(windows10.0-kb4577586-x64_ec16e118cd8b99df185402c7a0c65a31e031a6f0.msu)

[Thomas Duffin IV]

Re: Win 10 ver 2004?

It's on Page 2 of the list

[heyrick]

Flash is still a thing?

I must have exorcised that about a decade ago.

[naive]

VmWare VCenter users should hurry

Since most VCenter 6.5 versions rely on Flash to work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really?

Was the snide anti-Trump aside really necessary? Was it Simon Sharwood or El Reg who decided it was fine to alienate a large section of its readership like that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Really?

"alienate a large section of its readership"

Lewis Page started it. Or do I mean that Orlowski chap, I forget.

Speaking of aliens and motherships, where am I going to get my dose of the Radiophonatron now? Help!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/news/radiophonatron.shtml

[redpawn]

Re: Really?

Large really?

[jelabarre59]

Re: Really?

That was my thought too. Does ElReg have SUCH a bug up it's bum it has to flog the far-left agenda?

[Joe Gurman]

Oh, k3wl

Now Windows users can be where Mac users were a decade ago.

[Ribfeast]

All good unless you have a network switch, SAN, or other device that has ceased vendor firmware support, and requires flash in order to manage the damn thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash! Ahaaaaaaa!

Infector of the universe....

[Ian 55]

It'd be great if they could release the source code and its history

Then we could see how many times there were things like

if intvar > maxint then ..

and

// if InputOutOfRange() then Reject() ; // removing this made the routine 0.001% faster!

in the code.

I always wondered if the authors were responsible for Microsoft's Stacker clone, which wrote to the real disk and then just assumed the write had been successful because that saved a microsecond over actually checking that it had.