Mozilla is allowing Adobe Flash to run on its Firefox browser again, after blocking the plugin for two days over security vulnerabilities. Tech experts have called for an end to Flash, widely loathed for security and compatibility reasons.
Flash was reinstated Wednesday after Adobe issued an update fixing the vulnerabilities which had prompted Mozilla to block the plugin two days earlier.
The day before Mozilla pulled the plug, Facebook’s chief security officer Alex Stamos spoke out against the plugin calling for Adobe to kill it once and for all.
“It is time for Adobe to announce the end-of-life date for Flash,” the security chief wrote in a tweet on Sunday.
Head of Firefox Support Mark Schmidt quickly followed suit, excitedly announcing that Flash had been blocked by default on all versions of the browser, meaning Firefox users had to switch browsers if they wanted to access Flash content.
To be clear, Flash is only blocked until Adobe releases a version which isn’t being actively exploited by publicly known vulnerabilities,” Schmidt clarified in a follow up tweet. The update appeared 2 days later.
Mozilla co-founder and JavaScript inventor Brendan Eich foreshadowed this Flash-bashing momentum with a tweet of his own on Saturday.
Last week it emerged that Hacking Team, a spyware company, had been exploiting Flash to remotely commandeer people’s computers and infect them with malware. The revelation was made after unknown hackers managed to hack Hacking Team and post their internal company documents on Twitter. The leak also disclosed that the FBI and other federal agencies were among the compromised company’s clients.