On 12 January, just after 8:15 am local time, computers started going wrong at the Dalian Train Operations Center in northeast China. The vendor browsers did not load train register details. After six hours, conciliators lost the ability to print train data from the web app. According to the depot account on Weibo and WeChat, and a follow-up post a day or two later, the system went on and off for 20 hours before IT staff finally set it up. The culprit seems to have been a seismic, but unexpected, movement on the internet: the demise of Adobe Flash Player.
As 2020 drew to a close, Adobe ended support for its popular but nostalgic multimedia platform. On January 12, Adobe took matters a step further, bringing a killer version it had been releasing in Flash updates for months that prevents content from running in the player – essentially rendering the software inoperable. The company had been warning of the move for years, while browsers like Chrome and Firefox were moving users to other levels. Apple spent a decade trying to remove web developers from Flash. But organizations like the Dalian Depot did not receive the memo. Frantic workers ended up spewing old versions of the software, even modifying them to run on all different versions of Windows to make the system stable.
“Twenty more hours of fighting. No one complained. No one gave it. In solving the Flash problem, we turned the vision of hope into a fuel for advancement, ”officials wrote in a post mortem, as translated with journalist Tony Lin.
The event at Dalian Depot addresses the fact that Flash is not really dead yet, and will remain disconnected – and sometimes unknown – in networks around the world. Mainland China is the only region of the world where Flash will still be officially available through a distributor that Adobe participated in in 2018. But some users have complained that problems with the specific Chinese version of the program and have found ways to keep using regular editing.
After decades of abuse by hackers, especially those who run “malvertising” advertising schemes, Flash outlets – whether deliberately forgotten or maintained – could infect networks. appear for years to come. Recently updated versions of the software do not have a marketing version, after all. And because Adobe no longer supports the software, there will be no security vulnerabilities for new Flash vulnerabilities that emerge.
“Flash Player can remain on your system if you do not install it,” Adobe says in FAQ. “Adobe has blocked Flash content from running in Flash Player starting on 12 January, 2021, and major browser vendors are disabled and will continue to enable Flash Player. from running after the EOL Date. ”
In October, Microsoft also released an optional update for Windows 8 and above that removes the built – in version of Flash at the operating system.
Despite this multifaceted strategy, however, some institutions will continue. In addition to the risk of organizations not updating their software, Adobe’s latest feature of Flash introduced a special enterprise feature that allows network administrators to override their software. kill version and add Flash actions to “allowed” list. “Any use of the domain level license list… is strongly discouraged, is not supported by Adobe, and is entirely at the user ‘s discretion,” the company says.
Even organizations that uninstall Desktop Flash have to worry about the browser versions if they do not update those regularly. For systems that do not receive or do not receive updates easily, both of these Flash Player instances can mean twice as much.