[Omnitech]

One of the perennial modern drudgeries of doing system administration is keeping on top of all the constant software updates and patches to fix the continuous stream of software flaws and bugs, especially the security-related ones that run the risk of compromising the systems (and thus the organizations) you manage.

Adobe Flash Player has gotten to the point where Adobe is oftentimes releasing patches for security vulnerabilities several times a month.

When I saw that Blackberry 10 was going to support Flash, I had mixed feelings about that. On the up side, it gives the platform a leg up on competitors that don't offer that capability and potentially increases the number of websites that will be fully functional in the BB10 web browser. On the downside, it potentially opens up the platform to the kinds of vulnerabilities that plague every other platform that supports Flash.

I noticed today that Blackberry has recently released this advisory about a Flash vulnerability in the Playbook OS, which is addressed by a new Playbook OS update.

In the advisory, it states categorically that this issue does not affect Blackberry Smartphones. However I know that since BB10 was first publicly released, there have been a number of updates released on other platforms Flash is available on, to address various security issues.

So is there something "magic" about the implementation in Blackberry 10 that doesn't suffer from the vulnerabilities most other platforms do when it comes to Flash? Or is it possible that Blackberry is downplaying these issues since, unlike the Playbook, they do not have direct control over software update releases to customers when it comes to smartphones?

Inquiring minds think about these things.

[imz]

Macromedia Flash was actually quite good in its early infancy.

Then adobe bought out Macromedia, killed Freehand, then Fireworks, and have battered the crap out of Flash and Dreamweaver.

Incompetent.



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