Adobe Tells Users to Uninstall Flash Player
Adobe Flash Player’s EOL is coming on Dec. 31, 2020. The End of Life (EOL) timeline has been coming since Adobe's announcement on July 2017 that it will no longer update or distribute Flash Player as of the end of 2020. In a new post on its Adobe Flash Player EOL information page, Adobe said that after Dec. 31, it will freeze updates for Flash, remove Flash Player download links from its website, and block Flash-based content from running in Adobe Flash Player. Adobe recommends that all users uninstall Flash Player before the EOL date. Users will be prompted by Adobe to uninstall Flash Player on their machines later this year and Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date.
Flash is a well known target for cyberattacks, particularly for exploit kits, zero-day attacks and phishing schemes. Open standards like HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly that serve as viable alternatives for Flash content has prompted Adobe to kill the software. The EOL announcement has widespread impact on developers, enterprises, and consumers using specific OS environments or browsers, and Adobe has worked with technology partners such as Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla to prepare for EOL. By announcing the end of Flash Player back in 2017, Adobe believed that it would give developers, designers, businesses, and other parties enough time to migrate existing Flash content to new, open standards.
Adobe will continue issuing regular Flash Player security patches, maintain OS and browser compatibility, and features and capabilities until Dec. 31 2020. Adobe recently released a critical Flash Player flaw was fixed. Adobe Flash has had a long history of malicious use and abuse and replacement technologies have matured to the point of being viable alternatives. Even with safer technologies, businesses must still maintain diligence around their secure software delivery lifecycle, and users should still maintain basic safety and security on the web such as being mindful of the types of sites they visit, and where they share their personal data.