“Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, and Oracle’s Java. All three are virtually ubiquitous on modern-day PCs, and all three provide handy-dandy functionality—functionality that, in the case of Flash and Java, can’t be directly reproduced by a third-party solution,” Brad Chacos writes for PCWorld. “If we lived in a vacuum, it would be hard to argue that the trio doesn’t deserve its spot on computers around the globe.”
“We don’t live in a vacuum, though,” Chacos writes. Here in the real world, widespread adoption of the software makes all three irresistible targets for hackers and malware peddlers. The attacks reached a fever pitch in the early months of 2013, with a flood of reports about Flash, Reader, and Java exploits.”
Chacos writes, “But don’t yank out that ethernet cable or wrap your desk in a Faraday cage just yet. You don’t have to use Java, Flash, and Reader just because everyone else does. I spent more than a week without Reader, Java, Flash, and their respective browser plug-ins to see if it’s possible to live without the software and not suffer massive migraines.”
Read more in the full article here.