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Mozilla has blocked all versions of Adobe Flash in its Firefox browser, dealing another major blow to the much-maligned platform.

The company's support team said Flash would remain blocked until "Adobe releases a version which isn't being actively exploited by a publicly known vulnerabilities".


On a support page Mozilla told users it had blocked Flash for their "protection". "The problematic add-on or plugin will be automatically dibbled and no longer usable", the firm explained.

In order to see this embed, you must give consent to Social Media cookies. Open my cookie preferences. To be clear, Flash is only blocked until Adobe releases a version which isn't being actively exploited by publicly known vulnerabilities. — Mark Schmidt 🌐 (@MarkSchmidty) July 14, 2015

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The latest security concerns surrounding Flash come from documents stolen from Hacking Team, which revealed major flaws in the software that were being used by the company to remotely control computers. Adobe is still working to fix the flaws, which it labelled "critical vulnerabilities".

And Mozilla isn't the only one worried about Flash. Facebook's chief security officer Alex Stamos has called on Adobe to announce an "end of life" date for Flash.

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In a series of posts on Twitter Stamos said Adobe needed to set a date to "drive" people to ditch Flash and upgrade to HTML5. He added that if Adobe decided on a date to switch off Flash for good it would enable the whole "ecosystem" to upgrade "at once".


The curtain has seemingly been coming down on Flash since 2010 when then Apple CEO Steve Jobs said the platform was "no longer necessary" in the era of open standards such as HTML5. His comments led to Adobe abandoning its Flash Player for mobile in November 2011.

Earlier this year YouTube made HTML5 its default player, while a recent update to Chrome saw the browser "intelligently" pause Flash to stop unnecessary content from running on web pages.

Adobe released a new version of Flash just as this story was being published. The change logs detailing the security enhancements have not yet been made public, and Mozilla and Facebook have obviously yet to say whether or not the update will serve to appease their concerns. It's likely -- particularly in light in Stamos' remarks -- that many have already made up their minds about whether or not Flash should have a future.