These updates are a good idea, since Flash plugins have had some security vulnerabilities.

In this case it is a very good idea to update to current versions.

It is not every Flash update as besides Adobe trying to fix critical zero day exploits in last couple updates and Mozilla had not added Flash versions to the Blocklist ever since January/February 2013 as you can seen in https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/blocked/.

Mozilla only resorts to blocking certain Plugin and Extension versions when they pose say a serious security, stability or even malware issues at time.

http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/release-note/fp_16_air_16_release_notes.html https://helpx.adobe.com/security.html

Only Flash Player 16.0.0.296 and 13.0.0.264 ESR for Windows/Mac OSX and 11.2.202.440 for Linux are secure at moment. https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html

Please understand, if I were talking about running updates every couple weeks on a couple computers or if the end user was able to install the update, we would just do the update(s). There are 5 of us on our team and we support over 2,000 computers. We run a product called Smart Shield from Centurion, this stops students (K-12) from modifying the computers, as we would have way more issues than just a couple updates. I understand the importance of the updates, but it is not feasible to run updates every couple weeks (yes, it was just 2-3 weeks ago when we saw this update request, and before we even got all our student computers updated, Adobe has pushed another update out.) I hope this helps you understand the gravity of the situation and maybe now someone can provide a helpful solution.

Is there a way to disable Firefox from telling me that Adobe Flash Player is out of date?

You can disable the add-ons blocklist in Firefox and delete the existing blocklist.xml file in the Profile folder.

Disable these prefs. extensions.blocklist.enabled = change that pref to false extensions.blocklist.url = delete the url so Firefox can't find the server where that file is sent from

Thank you the-edmeister! I will try this on a couple machines tomorrow and see if that works!

Something for you to think about. Your Windows computer has the Task Scheduler program. Once a week or more, have the scheduler do an auto update on its own. Note that some things do not auto-update. Adobe.com for example.

westj said

We run a program that does not allow students to update programs or make any other changes. The problem is, Firefox thinks that we HAVE to update Flash Player every time there is a new release. This is just not feasible with as many computers as we support. 99% of the time, the update is not necessary.

Looking over the actual blocklist I'd rather not disable everything "extensions.blocklist.enabled" is designed to do, but I still would like to single out Adobe Flash because their ESR v-13 continues to be updated more frequently that I would have imagined for the reason of this "Extended Service Release"; is it possible, please, to edit the blocklist programatically (batch)?? For example: I installed Flash v-ESR 13.0.0.264 on 01/29 got warnings for v-13.0.0.269 around 02/26 --which also makes me wonder if I should have gotten a series of 5 warnings for (v-265--269) in about a mont's time.

I, too, work for a school and was hoping ESR v-13 would remain the static workable version until it fails to deliver flash content because of improvements to core -strictly necessary- development. Or am I missing the point of ESR?

Thanks. --Bill

Is this possible? Have all programs, plugins and other stuff placed in one master computer. Have all other computers call the master for those things, leaving things like settings on the individual systems. This way, you only need to update the master system.

Adobe doesn't really have an ESR version of Flash, I'm not sure what their current policy is but it's best to be as up to date as possible. That being said, I understand that being on a deployed network of 2k computers is kinda rough. I'd suggest that you update to the latest version of Flash as quickly as possible, disable the Firefox blocklist, and just have a regular update schedule (every 4 weeks or so). Since you are using a product that I imagine is like Deep Freeze, you don't have to worry about security issues as much since the machine gets wiped on every restart.

I'd start investigating ways to better manage deployments of updated software.

They do have ESR version for Win/Mac at https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html where it is mainly security/stability fixes.

westj said

but I still would like to single out Adobe Flash because their ESR v-13 continues to be updated more frequently that I would have imagined for the reason of this "Extended Service Release"; is it possible, please, to edit the blocklist programatically (batch)?? For example: I installed Flash v-ESR 13.0.0.264 on 01/29 got warnings for v-13.0.0.269 around 02/26 --which also makes me wonder if I should have gotten a series of 5 warnings for (v-265--269) in about a mont's time. I, too, work for a school and was hoping ESR v-13 would remain the static workable version until it fails to deliver flash content because of improvements to core -strictly necessary- development. Or am I missing the point of ESR?

Just like with Flash 16.0 the 13.0 ESR gets security and stability updates as Adobe was trying to fix critical exploits proven in wild as to why there were five updates in a short time. https://helpx.adobe.com/security.html#flashplayer

ESR means it is a version supported for a longer period of time compared to the main version at time. The first Flash 16.0 I believe was 16.0.0.235 released early December 2014.