Goodbye, old and insecure versions of Flash Player, and good riddance! The popular Adobe Flash Player has gained an infamous reputation as one of the most insecure pieces of software.
New vulnerabilities are discovered in it regularly, tens of them every year.
And with the parent company launches patches every single month, the fact that the Flash Player is used on countless millions of computers means that not all users keep them up to date — which ultimately is a risk situation for all involved.
As a result, Microsoft is now stepping in.
The software titan, in order to ensure that users are on the latest build of the Flash Player, has announced that it is making some changes to Internet Explorer. Starting October 11, 2016, old version of Flash Player will automatically be blocked in IE on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
This is what Redmond announced today:
“Starting on October 11, 2016, we’re expanding the out-of-date ActiveX control blocking feature to include outdated versions of Adobe Flash Player. This update notifies you when a Web page tries to load a Flash ActiveX control older than (but not including): Adobe Flash Player version 21.0.0.198 and Adobe Flash Player Extended Support Release version 18.0.0.241.”
he decision does not impact Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 users, as they are automatically updated to the latest version of Flash Player when needed.
Plus, Edge users are also not impacted, as the Flash Player is built into this new web browser, and is automatically updated via Windows Update as part of the Patch Tuesday update cycle. Internet Explorer, then, is the only browser affected with this new policy change.
Microsoft says that IE will warn of Flash ActiveX control blocking once per tab and all subsequent out-of-date controls will be allowed.
However, users who are not members of the Local Administrators groups on PC will not see the blocks.
All for a good cause, with the web slowly and steadily migrating toward the HTML5 standard. Expect more such measures to be put into place to protect users, as Flash Player now joins outdated Java and Silverlight content.
source:windows10update
