Flash as spyware

[Bill McGonigle]

On Mar 28, 2006, at 22:33, Paul Lussier wrote:

> Websites have always had the ability to
> write to local disk, you're browser does that for them, how do you
> think your .[mozilla,galeon, whatever]/cache directory fills up with
> so much crap?

Yeah, but the key difference Bill was getting at is with Flash they can 
ask for the data back.

Hey, if you're a popular website you could use Flash to store an 
offsite copy of your enterprise backup in your users' Flash cache! Just 
crypt the data and ship of a hundred K to each user. :)  A restore 
might take a few days but the price is right!

Flash has also been used to circumvent pop-up blockers and install 
spyware.  Just in case you haven't heard every version of Flash ever 
released before last week or so has local exploits.  You're 
auto-updating Flash, right?  What do you mean there's no auto-update?

I actually hear web designers say, "I can't wait until we don't have to 
use HTML anymore and everything is all Flash".  Try get get info on a 
new car lately?  It seems, nearly universally, you need Flash to do so. 
  Perhaps if there's an outcome with the Target section 508 suit some of 
this will come back to Earth.  There's still no open source 
Flash2Something else converter that works.

I'm interested in what happens to the SVG/Flash rivalry now that Adobe 
owns Macromedia.

-Bill

-----
Bill McGonigle, Owner           Work: 603.448.4440
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