As you know, very soon, on December 31, 2020, support for Adobe Flash Player will be completely discontinued, after which it will no longer be supported by all modern browsers. Now Microsoft has released an update to remove Adobe Flash from Windows.
Let me remind you that work on a complete rejection of Flash Player support has been going on since 2017, when Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, as well as Adobe itself, announced the official date of the final “death” of the technology.
Preparations for this event are in full swing.
The company also said that all “Flash content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the support expiration date.” That is, the company has added or is planning to add a kind of time bomb to the Flash Player code to prevent its future use.
Let me remind you that the vulnerabilities of the Adobe Flash Player technology have traditionally been included in the ratings of the most dangerous bugs for quite some time. For example, recently Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Agency (CISA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) published the TOP 10 software vulnerabilities, most commonly exploited in 2016-2019, and of course Flash Player got its rightful place there.
Now representatives of Microsoft have come up with a similar initiative. This week, KB4577586 was released to remove Adobe Flash from all versions of Windows 10 and Windows Server and to prevent it from being reinstalled on the device.
The update is only available through the official directory and cannot be removed after installation. Later, in early 2021, the company plans to distribute the update through WSUS and Windows Update.
Bleeping Computer journalists tried to figure out what exactly is removed after installing KB4577586.
During tests, it turned out that the version of Flash Player (32-bit) included with Windows 10 and accessible through Control Panel is being removed. However, the Adobe Flash Player component built into Microsoft Edge and other browsers stays in place, just like any other standalone version of the program.
