Firefox blocks Flash over security issues

In the backdrop of security issues plaguing Adobe's Flash plugin, Mozilla's open-source browser Firefox has blocked the software.

The policy was announced by head of Firefox support in a post on his Twitter today.

Firefox users were told on Mozilla's support page that the Flash Player plugin 18.0.0.203 was "blocked for your protection."

"When Mozilla becomes aware of add-ons, plugins, or other third-party software that seriously compromises Firefox security, stability, or performance and meets certain criteria, the software may be blocked from general use," it added.

According to The Verge, big internet entities had slowly withdrawn support from Flash, many of them replacing it with HTML5.

While a similar policy had been adopted by YouTube, Google's Chrome browser intelligently paused instances of Flash video on its pages.

"This latest wave of anti-Flash action might not kill it immediately, but it should at least mark the beginning of the end for the software," The Verge said.

Mark Schmidt, the head of the Firefox support team at Mozilla, tweeted that all versions of Flash Player were blocked in the browser as of its latest update.

The Tweet was accompanied by an image showing a raised fist and the phrase "Occupy Flash."

He later clarified that while the software was blocked in the latest version of Firefox, Mozilla support for Flash as default for its browser would resume when Adobe released a new version.

The company had earlier blocked Flash, Java, and a range of other plugins and software when they were found to have security holes. Schmidt further noted that Firefox users could still choose to enable Flash if they wished in the settings menu.

Problems with the software are not new, Steve Jobs explained the problems with Flash in an open letter published back in 2010, but it had somehow clung doggedly to life, and had even survived the discovery of multiple critical security vulnerabilities every year.

In a recent development 400GB of files uncovered in the Hacking Team leak revealed serious flaws in Flash that the spyware company used to force its way into target computers.

While Adobe had been quick to fix problems as they became public, the web's biggest companies, however had slowly withdrawn support from the software over the past few years.