Facebook And Firefox Try To KO Flash Plugin

The war against Flash has been stepped up a notch after Firefox blocked every version of Adobe's plugin from running on its Firefox browser.

Facebook (NasdaqGS: FB - news) 's head of security has also called for Adobe to kill off Flash, because vulnerabilities are being exploited by hackers.

Firefox users now have to opt-in to view videos or use web tools which rely on Flash to play - by clicking and accepting a warning.

The warning states: "Flash is known to be vulnerable. Use with caution."

The block is expected to remain in place until security bugs are patched, a process which is proving challenging to Adobe due to the sheer number of them.

Facebook security chief Alex Stamos said a date for killing off Flash altogether must be decided upon soon.

He said: "Nobody takes the time to rewrite their tools and upgrade to HTML5 because they expect Flash to live forever. We need a date to drive it."

TV and movie services such as Sky TV and Netflix (NasdaqGS: NFLX - news) have already switched to Microsoft (NasdaqGS: MSFT - news) 's Silverlight instead of Flash, while others have adopted HTML5.

Apple (NasdaqGS: AAPL - news) helped stoke the move away from Flash with the launch of the original iPhone in 2007, which famously blocked the plugin.