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Games and animation site Newgrounds announced it is working on a way to play Flash content via emulation.
Ruffle is an open source Adobe Flash Player emulator written in Rust. It targets desktop and the web using Web Assembly, so unlike the plugin (which is scheduled for end-of-life in 2020), any security issues would be issues with the web browser itself.
While the creation of new Flash content instead of modern technology seems a Bad Idea, this Soylentil for one would be quite happy to replay some of the classics (which stopped working when the plugin was banned from his system).
[ Ed Note: the source article claims that open source is the reason why there won't be any vulnerabilities: "For anyone who is concerned about Flash's reputation for security - this project is entirely open source and any security issues would be issues with the web browser itself, whereas the traditional Flash plugin was a closed system that created unique opportunities for exploits." - Fnord666]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @12:41AM (2 children)
If Adobe owns the property rights to all ActionScript, couldn't they shut this down? Also, Google and Mozilla have been pushing hard to kill Flash, what's to prevent them from blocking this too? Lastly, why wouldn't Adobe have ported to Web Assembly themselves? Why retire the product/tooling if there was a way to keep it going without the security risks? Was it not profitable?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @03:33AM
Back in the days of java and activex plugins, when the browser was immature and didn't have sufficient features baked in.
One it surpassed a certain subset of features it made more financial sense for Adobe to produce a product that generates HTML5+CSS+JS rather than attempting to keep Flash competitive with the web browser, particularly as security features and DRM were baked in.
The primary use of flash besides web animations, then interactive chat, was drmed videos. All of this fun functionality has been rolled in the browser and the security issues with flash mean that all trust in it as a secure plugin has been eroded, much like the jvm plugin, and as such it is better to leave maintenance to the browser developers and take advantage of the features they have in ways that an artist can use without delving too far into the specifics of browser compatibility.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday August 26 2019, @02:55PM
Early on, the SWF specification was intended for use by authors of tools that output SWF, not by reimplementations of Flash Player. But in April 2008, Adobe announced it was dropping the ban on third-party SWF players as part of the "Open Screen Project" initiative.
Because it's not Adobe Flash Player. It's a different program that happens to read the same file format, and it runs in a virtual machine that the browser publisher controls. If an SWF player can escape, so can malware, and that's something a browser publisher both wants to fix and has power to fix.
Bingo. Requiring SWF authors to retire their paid-for copies of Flash MX or Flash CS in favor of annual licenses of Adobe Creative Cloud brings in more revenue.