‘The main thing is not to install Flash,’ says hacker Miller
Do you want to keep your Mac secure? The best advice one of the world’s most famous hackers “security researchers” has to offer is that you shouldn’t use Adobe’s crash prone, resource gobbling multimedia plugin — it’s just that simple.
Oneitsecurity — their name is only intelligible when viewed as a graphic — has posted an interview with Charlie Miller, a security researcher best known for winning CanSecWest’s annual pwn2own contest. For several years in a row, he’s taken the top cash + swag (i.e. Apple products) prize at the event by taking control of various Apple products, which I guess says a lot about his platform preference.
Thereupon, miller’s got some rather straight forward advise for making your computer more secure.
In your opinion, which is the safer combination OS + browser to use?
That’s a good question. Chrome or IE8 on Windows 7 with no Flash installed. There probably isn’t enough difference between the browsers to get worked up about. The main thing is not to install Flash!
Likewise, Miller goes on to note that Mac, Linux and Windows are all equally easy to hack and that there’s little if any difference security wise between the various browsers. While there are some easy things you can do to make your Mac more secure, the most effective — big shock(wave) — is to not use Flash.
That’s it. He doesn’t suggest getting anti-virus or Flash block software, or setting up a Firewall or any such thing. Just get rid of Flash.
- Macintosh HD > Library > Internet Plugins > remove Flash Player.plugin, flashplayer.xpt, NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave
I imagine Adobe’s trolls will be working overtime tonight to astroturf Charlie’s comments back into the stone age…
What’s your take?
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March 2nd, 2010
Flash is the biggest pain in computers today. It causes all of the crashes in Safari, it runs down battery life and computer resources, and it introduces HUGE SECURITY HOLES – GAPING HOLES that Apple nor Adobe can fix because there are so many.
Flash is as good as dead.
November 1st, 2010
just unplug your Ethernet cable… or turn your wifi switch off. This will guarantee you will not get hacked, or get a virus over the internet.
Seriously though… for the average joe browsing the web going without flash is going to be a pain. The average person is going to get pretty annoyed when they can’t waste time at work playing all the flash based games they’re addicted to. Eventually something just as resource hungry, and vulnerable will come along and replace flash. Telling the typical user to just not use it will just annoy them.
August 12th, 2011
I do love ClickToFlash (CTF) – for Safari on the Mac. I can not find it for the W7 version, but its killer. So you still have flash and you can use it – hover, Flash will no load – unless you specifically click on the ad/banner/annoyance/video/etc…
It saves a ton of resources and makes things faster and more stable… and if you need to use it on that rare occasion – you can.
Also some sites (like YouTube.com), CTF will load the h.264 video instead.
Flash is not dead, but it should be!