… the corrupt DEA agent in Luc Besson’s great movie “Léon (The Professional)”.
I’m sure quite some of you, dear readers, know the plot…
Just before the final shootout, when sending the first men of the NYPD ESU team
into Léon’s apartment, he tells them to “Be careful!”. After learning those men
got killed he just comments: “I told you”.
[btw: before yelling to bring “EEEEEEEVERYONE!!!!”, as those familiar with the
piece will certainly remember ;-)].
I’m fully aware that I risk playing “the arrogant scumbag card” today and that it’s generally not very nice to refer to one’s own earlier statements with an “I told you” attitude (especially if harm was caused to some party), but this is exactly how I feel when reading these news. And – pls believe me – it’s an expression of utmost despair.
How often do organizations have to be told that running Adobe Flash might not be the greatest idea in the world, security-wise? How many statistics like this one (see section “Vulnerabilities” in the bottom part of it) have to see the light of the world until people realize that (quoting from this blogpost) “running Flash on corporate desktops is simply asking for trouble. Asking for trouble loudly. Very loudly.”?
When we wrote
this document
on configuring IE8 securely we pointed out that using Adobe Flash required a
risk acceptance, from our perspective. Man, how I was attacked! for this very
statement afterwards in the customer environment that document was initially
developed for. I’ve since mentioned Flash in this blog
here,
here
and here.
Furthermore we’ll include a talk on Flash in next year’s
Troopers line-up, I promise. And be it only to avoid this
post sounding like a crusade of a bitter old man… (yes, this was a wordplay
referring to some character from the movie ;-).
yours sincerely
Stansfield