Adobe® Flash® Player 32.

0
Administration Guide

August 20, 2020

 Contents

Chapter: 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Why install Flash Player? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Additional resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Flash Player and deployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Design and development tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Chapter: 2 Flash Player environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Player files and locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Firefox/Mozilla NPAPI plug-in architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Windows NPAPI plug-in filenames and locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
macOS NPAPI plug-in filenames and locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Linux plug-in filenames and locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Chromium PPAPI plug-in architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Windows PPAPI plug-in filenames and locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
macOS PPAPI plug-in filenames and locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Linux PPAPI plug-in filenames and locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
ActiveX Control on Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Additional files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
FlashUtil.exe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Data formats used . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Network protocols used . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Player processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Player versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Chapter: 3 Player installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Installers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Uninstalling Flash Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Uninstalling on Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Silent mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Uninstalling on Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Uninstalling on macOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Manually Uninstalling Flash Player on Macintosh . . . . . . . . .11

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 EXE installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
Active Directory installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Flash Player Catalog for Microsoft System Center Updates Publisher . .14
Configuring SMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
SMS and Adobe Catalog installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
System requirements for SMS deployment . . . . . . . . . . . .16
SMS tools for deploying custom updates . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
Downloading the Flash Player catalog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
Importing the Flash Player catalog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
Publishing the Flash Player catalog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Confirming successful publication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Deploying the update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Additional resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Interactive MSI installation using SMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Command line MSI installations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Manually launch the installer on the client . . . . . . . . . . . .21
Launch the installer on the client using quiet mode . . . . . . .21
Reinstalling a Flash Player using a batch routine . . . . . . . . .22
Performing a background update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Background updates from an internal server . . . . . . . . . . .23
Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Configure the server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Configure clients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Windows registry keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
PKG Installer for macOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
Silent installation of Flash Player (using .pkg installer package) .25
App installer for macOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
Silent installation of Flash Player (using .app installer bundle) . .26
Customizing player behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Troubleshooting installation problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Additional resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

Chapter: 4 Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Enterprise Enablement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Suppressing EOL Uninstall Prompts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
EOLUninstallDisable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29
AllowListPreview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29
TraceOutputEcho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
EnableAllowList . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
AllowListRootMovieOnly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
AllowListUrlPattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
Privacy and security settings (mms.cfg) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
mms.cfg file location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Setting options in the mms.cfg file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
File format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

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Character encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Summary of mms.cfg options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Privacy options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
AVHardwareDisable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
AVHardwareEnabledDomain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
DisableDeviceFontEnumeration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
EnableInsecureActiveXNavigateToURL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
User interface option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
FullScreenDisable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Data loading and storage options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
LocalFileReadDisable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
EnableInsecureLocalWithFileSystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
FileDownloadDisable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
FileDownloadEnabledDomain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
FileUploadDisable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
FileUploadEnabledDomain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
LocalStorageLimit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
ThirdPartyStorage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
AssetCacheSize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Update options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
AutoUpdateDisable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
AutoUpdateInterval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
DisableProductDownload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
ProductDisabled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
SilentAutoUpdateEnable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
SilentAutoUpdateServerDomain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
SilentAutoUpdateVerboseLogging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Security options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
LegacyDomainMatching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
LocalFileLegacyAction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
AllowUserLocalTrust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
EnforceLocalSecurityInActiveXHostApp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
FullScreenInteractiveDisable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
DisableNetworkAndFilesystemInHostApp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Socket connection options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52
DisableSockets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
EnableInsecureActiveXMHTMLSupport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
EnableInsecureByteArrayShareable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
EnableInsecureByteArrayShareableDomain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
EnableSocketsTo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
GPU Compositing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54
OverrideGPUValidation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
RTMFP options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54
RTMFPP2PDisable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
RTMFPTURNProxy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Protected mode options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55

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 ProtectedMode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
ProtectedModeBrokerAllowListConfigFile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
ProtectedModeBrokerLogfilePath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Hardware Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56
DisableHardwareAcceleration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Audio Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56
UseWAVPlayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
NetworkRequestTimeout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
EnableInsecureJunctionBehavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
EnableLocalAppData . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
DefaultLanguage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
IEClickToPlayBlocked . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
EnableIEClickToPlay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
IEClickToPlayBypass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
EventJitterMicroseconds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
TimerJitterMicroseconds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
InsecureJitterDisabledDomain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
The Global FlashPlayerTrust directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60

Chapter: 5 User-configured settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Accessing user settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62
Privacy options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63
Local storage options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63
Update options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63
Security options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64
Display options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65
The User FlashPlayerTrust directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66

Chapter: 6 Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Security overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67
Security sandboxes for local content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68
The local-with-file-system sandbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69
The local-with-networking sandbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69
The local-trusted sandbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69
About compatibility with previous Flash Player security models . . . . .69
Data loading through different domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
Additional security resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71

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 WHY INSTALL FLASH PLAYER?
CHAPTER 2 INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Why install Flash Player?

Adobe® Flash® Player is the software that allows computers to play multimedia content contained in SWF
(pronounced “swiff”) files, which are the main type of file used by Flash Player. This content can be
created by Adobe® Animate, Adobe® Flash® Builder™, or other tools that output the SWF file format.
SWF content can range from simple animations to online advertisements to complete applications that
communicate over the Internet.
Adobe Flash Player is available in multiple forms. In its most popular form, it is embedded in a web
browser as a plug-in or an ActiveX control.
You may have been asked to deploy Adobe Flash Player in your network environment because someone
in your company has built a SWF application for business use, or because there is external SWF content
that employees want to have access to.
To deploy Adobe Flash Player, you must first acquire a license to do so. Distribution licenses are free of
charge and can be acquired through the online licensing application at:
www.adobe.com/licensing/distribution.
NOTE: You must use your company or organization email address when requesting a distribution license.
Public email addresses (such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, and so on) are not allowed.
For answers to questions regarding Adobe Flash Player licensing and deployment, see the Adobe Player
Distribution FAQ at www.adobe.com/licensing/distribution/faq.

Additional resources
The following sites provide information about the Adobe Flash Platform, Adobe Flash Player, and related
design and development tools. For information about sites related specifically to issues covered in this
document, see the chapter that covers that issue.
For example, for an extensive list of resources specific to the topic of security, see Additional security
resources in Security considerations.
For the latest version of this guide, see the Adobe Flash Player Administration Guide section of the Flash
Player Developer Center at www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/flash_player_admin-
_guide.html.

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 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
CHAPTER 2 INTRODUCTION

Flash Player and deployment

The following sites contain information and links to help you understand how to deploy Adobe Flash
Player and work with SWF files.
• The Adobe Flash Player product page at www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer.html provides
information on a number of topics relating to installing, using, and deploying Flash Player. It also
contains links to documents that can answer just about any question you might have about Flash
Player, locations for downloading the player, user forums, and so on. Much of the information in
this document is excerpted from documents available from the Support Center.
• The Flash Player Developer Center Archive at helpx.adobe.com/air/archived-docs-download.html
provides extensive information about Adobe Flash Player, including development and deployment
of applications. The content includes Tech Notes, articles, and tutorials.
• The SWF File Format Specification at www.adobe.com/go/swf_file_format documents the SWF file
format and describes how to write SWF files.
• The Adobe Flash Player Release notes at www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flash-
player/releasenotes.html contain information about features, fixes and improvements, and known
issues for each version of the player.

Design and development tools

Adobe provides the following tools for developing SWF files (the file format that executes in Flash
Player):
• Animate (www.adobe.com/products/animate/)
In Animate (formerly Flash Professional), designers and developers create FLA files that contain
graphical elements, a timeline, and ActionScript code. Both ActionScript 2.0 and ActionScript 3.0 are
supported. FLA files are compiled into SWF files.
• Adobe® Flash® Builder®™ (www.adobe.com/products/flash-builder.html/)
In Adobe® Flash® Builder™ 4 (formerly Adobe® Flex® Builder™), developers and designers create
MXML files and FLA files using the open source Flex framework. They can also use ActionScript 3.0.
Both MXML and ActionScript compile into SWF files.
• Adobe® Flex® (www.adobe.com/products/flex/)
In Flex, developers create MXML files that describe the visual and code elements of their applica‐
tions. They can also use ActionScript 3.0. Both MXML and ActionScript compile into SWF files.

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 PLAYER FILES AND LOCATIONS
CHAPTER 3 FLASH PLAYER ENVIRONMENT

Flash Player environment

Player files and locations

Adobe Flash Player is normally deployed as a browser plug-in or ActiveX control. For each player environ-
ment, two versions of Flash Player are available—a “Content Debugger” version for developers, and a
“Release” version for end users. The Content Debugger player implements the same feature set as the
Release player, but also displays run-time errors. Each of these implementations is described in this
section.
NOTE: There is also a stand-alone player, but it’s usually installed by the development tools, not deployed
by administrators.

Firefox/Mozilla NPAPI plug-in architecture

Browsers that implement the Netscape Plug-In API (NPAPI), including Mozilla Firefox and Apple’s Safari
browser use this plug-in.

Windows NPAPI plug-in filenames and locations

On Windows, files named NPSWF32.dll (NPSWF64.dll for 64-bit Windows) and flashplayer.xpt are
installed.
NOTE: For Adobe Flash Player 11.2 and later, the DLL file name also includes the build number. For
example, NPSWF32_11_2_202_228.dll (32-bit Windows) and NPSWF64_11_2_202_228.dll (64-bit
Windows).
The installer places these files in directories that differ by OS version, as follows:
• 32-bit Windows - %WINDIR%\System32\Macromed\Flash
• 64-bit Windows, 32-bit mode - %WINDIR%\SysWow64\Macromed\Flash
• 64-bit Windows, 64-bit mode - %WINDIR%\System32\Macromed\Flash
NOTE: The %WINDIR% location represents the Windows system directory, such as C:\WINDOWS.

The Windows plug-in installer also places a broker application called FlashUtilnnn_Plugin.exe in the same
directory as the Flash Player Plug-in DLL. The nnn represents the version number and changes with each
release. FlashUtilnnn_Plugin.exe includes functionality required by Windows Vista and above, and as an
upgrade and uninstall mechanism.
NOTE: For Flash Player 11.2 and later, the broker file name also includes the build number. For example,
FlashUtil32_11_2_202_228_Plugin.exe (32-bit Windows) and FlashUtil64_11_2_202_228_Plugin.exe
(64-bit Windows).

3
 PLAYER FILES AND LOCATIONS
CHAPTER 3 FLASH PLAYER ENVIRONMENT

macOS NPAPI plug-in filenames and locations

On macOS, files named Flash Player.plugin and flashplayer.xpt are installed. These files are placed in the
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins folder.

Linux plug-in filenames and locations

On Linux, files named libflashplayer.so and flashplayer.xpt are installed. The install location is dependent
upon the browser, Linux distro, and distro version.

Chromium PPAPI plug-in architecture

Chromium-based browsers (such as Opera) on Windows and macOS use this plug-in.

Windows PPAPI plug-in filenames and locations

On Windows, files named pepflashplayer32.dll (pepflashplayer64.dll for 64-bit Windows) and mani-
fest.json are installed.
NOTE: The dll file name also includes the build number. For example, pepflashplayer32_22_0_0_157.dll
(32-bit Windows) and pepflashplayer64_22_0_0_157.dll (64-bit Windows).
The installer places these files in directories that differ by OS version, as follows:
• 32-bit Windows - %WINDIR%\System32\Macromed\Flash
• 64-bit Windows, 32-bit mode - %WINDIR%\SysWow64\Macromed\Flash
• 64-bit Windows, 64-bit mode - %WINDIR%\System32\Macromed\Flash
NOTE: The %WINDIR% location represents the Windows system directory, such as C:\WINDOWS. The
Windows PPAPI plug-in installer also places a broker application called FlashUtilnnn_pepper.exe in the
same directory as the Flash Player PPAPI Plug-in DLL. The nnn represents the version number and
changes with each release. FlashUtilnnn_pepper.exe includes functionality required by Windows Vista
and above, and as an upgrade and uninstall mechanism.

macOS PPAPI plug-in filenames and locations

On macOS, files named PepperFlashPlayer.plugin and manifest.json are installed. These files are placed
in the /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/PepperFlashPlayer folder.

Linux PPAPI plug-in filenames and locations

On Linux, files named libpepflashplayer.so and manifest.json are installed. The install location is depen-
dent upon the browser, Linux distribution, and version.

ActiveX Control on Windows

The ActiveX control is used by Microsoft Internet Explorer as well as some legacy Windows applications.
The player is an OCX file whose name reflects the version number.
NOTE: For Flash Player 11.2 and later, the .ocx file name also includes the build number. For example,
Flash32_11_2_202_228.ocx (32-bit) and Flash64_11_2_202_228.ocx (64-bit Windows).

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 DATA FORMATS USED
CHAPTER 3 FLASH PLAYER ENVIRONMENT

The installer places these OCX files in directories that differ by OS version, as follows:
• 32-bit Windows - %WINDIR%\System32\Macromed\Flash
• 64-bit Windows, 32-bit mode - %WINDIR%\SysWow64\Macromed\Flash
• 64-bit Windows, 64-bit mode - %WINDIR%\System32\Macromed\Flash
NOTE: The %WINDIR% location represents the Windows system directory, such as C:\WINDOWS.
NOTE: The Adobe Flash Player ActiveX control on Windows 8.1 and above is a built-in component of
Internet Explorer and Edge, managed directly by Microsoft via Windows Update. Adobe Flash Player
installations managed directly by Windows Update can only be modified by the operating system. These
installations cannot be modified by Adobe-distributed installers or uninstallers.
NOTE: Windows 8.0 is no longer supported. Users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Windows 8.1 or
Windows 10 to continue to receive Flash Player updates.

Additional files
On Windows, Adobe Flash Player includes helper utilities that facilitate automatic updates and broker
requests from sandboxed processes on Windows Vista and higher.

FlashUtil.exe
A utility file named FlashUtilnnn_ActiveX.exe is installed with Adobe Flash Player. The utility is versioned
with the control; for example, FlashUtil10h_ActiveX.exe is installed with the control Flash10h.ocx.
NOTE: For Flash Player 11.2 and later, the FlashUtil file name includes the entire build number. For
example, FlashUtil32_11_2_202_228_ActiveX.exe (for 32-bit) and FlashUtil64_11_2_202_228_Ac-
tiveX.exe (for 64-bit).
The FlashUtilnnn.exe file is associated with the notification auto-update functionality, uninstallation, and
brokering the interaction between the ActiveX control and Internet Explorer (brokering only occurs on
Windows Vista and above). There is also a file named FlashUtilnnn_ActiveX.dll.
When the browser plug-in is installed, a similar application named FlashUtilnnn_Plugin.exe or FlashUtil-
nnn_Pepper.exe is installed.

Data formats used

Several file types are created or read by Flash Player. These file types are summarized in the following list.
• SWF: The SWF file format is an efficient delivery format that contains vector graphics, text, video,
and sound. Adobe Flash Player executes SWF files. SWF files can be loaded into Flash Player dynam-
ically by instructions in other SWF files.
• CFG: These are configuration files that network administrators and developers can deploy along
with Adobe Flash Player to customize settings and address certain security issues for all users. For
more information, see Administration. End users can also create CFG files to address certain secu-
rity issues for that specific user; see The User FlashPlayerTrust directory.
• SWC (pronounced “swik”): These are SWF files that developers deliver as components for use when
working in the Flash authoring environment.

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 NETWORK PROTOCOLS USED
CHAPTER 3 FLASH PLAYER ENVIRONMENT

• SO: Shared object files are used by Adobe Flash Player to store data locally. For example, a devel-
oper may create a game application that stores information on high scores. This data may be stored
either for the duration of a Flash Player session, or persistently across sessions. In addition, Flash
Player creates a persistent shared object that stores player settings, such as the amount of disk
space a web site can use, if any, when creating shared objects.
Shared object files are stored in the following locations:

Windows Vista and above

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\randomDirec-
toryName

Windows 2000 and Windows XP

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedOb-
jects\randomDirectoryName

macOS
/Users/username/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/#SharedObjects/randomDirec-
toryName

Linux
GNU-Linux ~/.macromedia#SharedObjects/randomDirectoryName

Shared objects are stored in a directory with a randomly generated name for security purposes.
Flash Player remembers how to direct a SWF file to the appropriate location, but users of other ap‐
plications outside Flash Player, such as a web browser, cannot use those applications to access the
data. This limitation ensures that the data is used only for its intended purpose.
• MP3 - The compressed audio file format.
• JPG, PNG, and GIF- Image file formats. The TIF and BMP formats are not directly supported for use
in SWF files.
• FLV - Flash Player compressed video format.
• FXG - Flash XML graphics format. An XML-based graphics interchange format for the Flash Platform.
• XML (eXtensible Markup Language) - Used for sending and receiving larger amounts of data with
structured text.
• MXML - The XML-based language that developers use to lay out components in Flex applications.
NOTE: If you block access to any of these file types, certain functionality of Flash Player may be disabled.

Network protocols used

Flash Player can use the following network protocols:
• HTTP
• HTTPS

6
 PLAYER PROCESSES
CHAPTER 3 FLASH PLAYER ENVIRONMENT

• RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol) - a proprietary protocol used with Flash Media Server to
stream audio and video over the web. The default connection port is 1935.
• RTMPT - RTMP tunneling via HTTP. The default connection port is 80.
• RTMPS - RTMP tunneling via HTTPS. The default connection port is 443.
• SOAP - Simple Object Access Protocol
• UNC - Universal Naming Convention
• TCP/IP - Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
• FTP - File Transfer Protocol
• SMB - Server Message Block. SMB is a message format used by DOS and Windows to share files,
directories, and devices. Flash Player can load animations and SWF files from remote SMB shares.
Flash has restrictions on what Flash SWF files loaded from SMB shares are allowed to do.
• SSL - Secure Sockets Layer
• AMF - ActionScript Message Format

Player processes
Most often, Adobe Flash Player runs as a browser plug-in. When run as a stand-alone player, it launches
a process named FlashPlayer.exe. The one exception to this statement is when content is played back
using Internet Explorer on Windows Vista or above. In this case FlashUtilnnn_ActiveX.exe will be in the
process list.
Flash and Flex developers can package their SWF files into stand-alone EXE files, called projectors. When
a projector is run, it launches a single process, named for the projector executable filename.
Other processes are created when an Adobe Flash Player auto update occurs. GetFlash.exe, FlashUtilnn‐
n_ActiveX.exe, FlashUtilnnn_Plugin.exe, FlashUtilnnn_Pepper.exe, or FlashPlayerUpdateService.exe will
be running during an auto update request and subsequent downloading and installing of the updated
player. FlashUtilnnn_ActiveX.exe, FlashUtilnnn_Plugin.exe, , or FlashUtilnnn_Pepper.exe processes will
be visible when the Flash Player is uninstalled on Windows via Add/Remove Programs.

Player versions
Before deploying the player, you might want to know what version is already installed on an end user’s
machine. An easy way to determine the version of Adobe Flash Player installed is to navigate to
www.adobe.com/products/flash/about; this page displays a message stating which version is installed.
Alternatively, while a SWF file is playing, right-click (Windows or Linux) or Command-click (macOS) on the
SWF content and then choose “About Flash Player” from the context menu.
A Master Version XML file that lists all Adobe Flash Player versions for the various supported platforms
and browsers is available at https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/masterver-
sion/masterversion.xml.
Customers who use automation scripts to check for updates can use this file in their automation scripts.

7
 PLAYER VERSIONS
CHAPTER 3 FLASH PLAYER ENVIRONMENT

On macOS, the file Flash Player.plugin is located in the /Library/Internet Plug-Ins folder for NPAPI
browsers (Safari), or PepperFlashPlayer.plugin in the /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/PepperFlashPlayer folder
for PPAPI browsers (Chromium, Opera). To determine the version number, Command-click and choose
Get Info. The version number is available on the General menu.
On Windows, you can determine which version of the ActiveX control is installed by navigating to the
directory where the OCX file is located (see ActiveX Control on Windows for the default location).
Right-click on the OCX file and choose Properties, then inspect the value in the Version tab. If the OCX
file isn’t installed in the default location, you can determine its location and name by inspecting the
following registry key, which is created when the OCX control is registered:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000}\InprocSer
ver32
Similarly, you can determine the NPAPI or PPAPI Plug-in version by examining the version tab of the
NPSWF32.dll or pepflashplayer32.dll file, in the same folder as the ActiveX control.

8
 INSTALLERS
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

Player installation

Installers
When you license Flash Player, you will receive an email containing the license agreement and a link to
the Adobe Flash Player Distribution Page to download the installers from. Save this email and use the link
whenever you need to download the installation files.
The licensed installers for Flash Player are available in a number of forms. For the ActiveX control (Micro-
soft Internet Explorer), NPAPI Plug-In (Mozilla Firefox) and PPAPI (Chromium, Opera) plug-ins, you can
download either an executable (EXE) or MSI installer.
NOTE: Flash Player ActiveX control installers are only for Windows 7 and below. For Windows 8.1 and
higher, Flash Player is embedded in Internet Explorer and Edge. All updates to the embedded Flash Player
ActiveX for Internet Explorer/Edge are distributed by Microsoft via Windows Updates.
If you are using Microsoft System Center Updates Publisher 4.5, you can import the Adobe Flash Player
Catalog for deployment via WSUS 3.0 SP2. The Adobe Flash Player Catalog for System Center Updates
Publisher supports the delivery of the ActiveX control, NPAPI and PPAPI plug-ins.
If you are using Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 R2, you can also import the Adobe
Flash Player Catalog with the Inventory Tool for Custom Updates. The Adobe Flash Player Catalog only
supports the delivery of the ActiveX control.
For macOS, a PKG installer for the NPAPI or PPAPI plug-in is provided.
On openSUSE and Red Hat Linux, use an appropriate RPM or YUM package manager. For Ubuntu, use
Ubuntu Software Updater or APT delivery.
Adobe strongly recommends that you implement network installation strategies in a testing environ-
ment prior to implementation in a live environment. Adobe support cannot provide troubleshooting
assistance for customized installations.
On Windows and macOS, Adobe Flash Player enables system administrators to push updates to the client
systems they manage. The update mechanism supports background updates, which do not require
actions from the end-user. For more information, see Performing a background update.
For Windows 8.1 and higher, updates to Adobe Flash Player for Internet Explorer and Edge (ActiveX) are
distributed by Microsoft, via Windows Update. Adobe Flash Player Installers and Uninstallers cannot
modify instances of the ActiveX Flash Player installed via Windows Update.

Uninstalling Flash Player

To minimize the potential for installation issues, administrators should consider uninstalling any existing
copies of Adobe Flash Player and rebooting target systems before installing new versions.

9
 UNINSTALLING FLASH PLAYER
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

NOTE: Beginning with Flash Player 11.5, uninstalling Flash Player resets the AutoUpdateDisable and Silen-
tAutoUpdateEnable settings in mms.cfg to their default values of AutoUpdateDisable=0 and SilentAut-
oUpdateEnable=0 (Notification Updates enabled, Background Updates disabled).
NOTE: For administrators running the Flash Player uninstaller as part of their deployment process, who
also configure update settings via mms.cfg, any custom changes that you have made to either AutoUp-
dateDisable and/or SilentAutoUpdateEnable must be re-deployed with mms.cfg as part of the upgrade
installation.

Uninstalling on Windows
Before uninstalling Adobe Flash Player, all applications using Adobe Flash Player must be closed. Histor-
ically, it was common to find copies of the Adobe Flash Player plug-in active in popular instant messaging
applications (AOL instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, etc). Instances of applications hosted in Google
Chrome, like the Google Hangouts client, also can keep Chrome instances running in the background.
Use the uninstaller available at www.adobe.com/go/tn_14157 to uninstall any version of the player.

Silent mode
Beginning with the Adobe Creative Suite 5 and Adobe Flash Player (10.1.r52 and 10.1.r53), the /silent
method of uninstalling the player is deprecated in favor of “-uninstall”.
To uninstall only one Adobe Flash Player type, include the player type (active-x, plugin, or pepper-plugin)
as an argument when uninstalling silently, as follows:
uninstall_flash_player.exe -uninstall
To uninstall only one particular Flash Player type include the player type (active-x plugin, or pepper-
plugin) as an argument when uninstalling silently, as follows:
• ActiveX Control: uninstall_flash_player.exe -uninstall activex
– Windows 7 and prior. Microsofts embeds Flash Player for IE/Edge on Windows 8 and above
and Adobe's Flash Player uninstaller will NOT remove the embedded Flash Player ActiveX
Control.
• NPAPI Plugin: uninstall_flash_player.exe -uninstall plugin
• PPAPI Plugin: uninstall_flash_player.exe -uninstall pepperplugin
For more information, see Install earlier Flash Player version | Internet Explorer.

Uninstalling on Linux
To uninstall Flash Player on Linux, log in as root and use one of the following commands, depending on
the method used to install the plug-in originally (via rpm, yum, or APT):
NPAPI Plugin:
rpm -e flash-plugin
PPAPI Plugin:
rpm -e flash-player-ppapi

10
 UNINSTALLING FLASH PLAYER
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

NPAPI Plugin:
yum remove flash-plugin
PPAPI Plugin:
yum remove flash-player-ppapi
NPAPI and PPAPI Plugin:
apt-get remove adobe-flashplugin
RPM and YUM are for Red Hat and openSUSE. You can use YUM for Red Hat.

Uninstalling on macOS
To uninstall Adobe Flash Player on macOS, make sure all browsers are closed, along with any programs
that might be running SWF content, such as the Dashboard. Then use the Mac’s standalone uninstaller
to completely uninstall the Flash Player. You can download the appropriate uninstaller at
www.adobe.com/go/tn_14157.
As of macOS 11.6, silent uninstall is available using the standalone uninstaller, as follows:
1) Extract the Adobe Flash Player uninstaller bundle (Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller.app) from the
.DMG file.
2) Open a terminal window and change to the directory where the .app file is saved. For example, if
the .app file is saved on the Desktop of the current user, type: cd ~/Desktop.
3) Run the uninstaller contained in the .app file using the following command:
sudo /Adobe Flash Player.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Flash Player Install
Manager -uninstall.
4) Type the root password to proceed with the uninstallation.
NOTE: Uninstalling Flash Player on Mac will uninstall all Player types installed (such as NPAPI and PPAPI).

Manually Uninstalling Flash Player on Macintosh

1) Reset the Update Notification option and unload the SAU daemon:
a) Set the Update Notification options to default values in mms.cfg:
AutoUpdateDisable=0
SilentAutoUpdateEnable=0
b) Run launchctl unload to unload the SAU daemon. At the prompt type:
sudo /bin/launchctl unload
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.adobe.fpsaud.plist
2) Delete the following files, if found:
a) SYSTEM NPAPI PLUGIN:
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash Player.plugin
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash Player Enabler.plugin
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/flashplayer.xpt
b) SYSTEM PPAPI PLUGIN

11
 EXE INSTALLATION
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

/Library/Internet
Plug-Ins/PepperFlashPlayer/PepperFlashPlayer.plugin
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/PepperFlashPlayer/manifest.json
c) SAU:
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.adobe.fpsaud.plist
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flash Player Install
Manager/fpsaud
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flash Player Install
Manager/FPSAUConfig.xml
3) Delete install receipts:
– Delete any bundles that have the com.adobe.pkg.FlashPlayer bundle identifier
in/Library/Receipts. (The CFBundleIdentifier entry in the Info.plist inside
the bundle) .
– If pkgutil is present, run the following command:
sudo pkgutil --force --forget com.adobe.pkg.FlashPlayer.
4) Remove the Flash Player PreferencePane:
– Delete /Library/PreferencePanes/Flash Player.prefPane.
– Remove the com.adobe.preferences.flashplayer entry from inside
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist.
5) Remove the Install Manager app:
If the file exists at /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Flash Player Install
Manager.app, remove it.

EXE installation
The EXE installer can be run in either of two modes, interactive or silent. The interactive mode presents
a full user interface and displays error dialogs if necessary. The silent mode does not present a user inter-
face, and returns error codes if necessary.
Warnings and errors are written to the FlashInstall log file located at the following locations:
• 32-bit Windows: C:\\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash\FlashInstall32.log
• 64-bit Windows: C:\\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash\FlashInstall64.log and
C:\\Windows\SysWow64\Marcomed\Flash\FlashInstall32.log
To run the EXE in silent mode, use the "-install" command line parameter:
path to installer\install_flash_player_active_x.exe -install
The following exit codes are returned by the Windows EXE installers for Flash Player 10.1 and above:

Error code Meaning

0 No errors detected
1003 Invalid argument passed to installer

12
 ACTIVE DIRECTORY INSTALLATION
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

Error code Meaning

1011 Install already in progress

1012 Does not have admin permissions (W2K, XP)
1013 Trying to install older revision
1022 Does not have admin permissions (Vista, Windows 7)
1024 Unable to write files to directory
1025 Existing player in use
1032 ActiveX registration failed
1041 An application that uses the Flash Player is open. Quit the application and try again.
The following exit codes are returned by the Windows EXE installers for Flash Player 9:

The following exit codes are returned by the Windows EXE installers for Flash Player 9.

Exit code Meaning

3 Does not have admin permissions

4 Unsupported OS
5 Previously installed with elevated permissions
6 Insufficient disk space
7 Trying to install older revision
8 Browser is open

Active Directory installation

To deploy the Flash Player MSI through the Active Directory, you use group policies. Also, the MSI for
Flash Player must exist within a network share on which everyone has read permissions.
Flash Player can be deployed to either computers or users.
• Publish Flash Player to users.
Publishing is a group policy action.Therefore, when you publish Flash Player it doesn’t install the
MSI, but it does make it available to users the next time they log in. This implementation gives the
user the choice to install Flash Player through the Add/Remove Programs option in the Control Pan‐
el.
• Assign Flash Player to users.

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 FLASH PLAYER CATALOG FOR MICROSOFT SYSTEM CENTER UPDATES PUBLISHER
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

Assigning Flash Player to users is like publishing, in that it is also a group policy action; the assign‐
ment does not take effect until the next time the user logs in. However, unlike publishing, when the
user logs in, Flash Player will be installed and an icon added to the desktop.
• Assign Flash Player to computers.
Assigning Flash Player to a computer works similarly to assigning it to a user, with two major differ‐
ences. First, the assignment is linked to the computer and not to the user. The change takes effect
the next time that the computer is restarted. The second difference is that the deployment process
installs Flash Player without prompting the user.
To perform the deployment, open the Group Policy Editor.
Publish or assign an application to a user:
1) Navigate through the group policy console.
2) Select User Configuration > Software Settings > Software Installation.
3) Right-click on the Software Installation container
4) Select the New > Package commands from the context menu.
5) Select the Flash Player MSI and select Open.
6) Choose if you want to publish or assign Flash Player.
7) Select OK.
Assign Flash Player to a computer
1) Navigate through the group policy console.
2) Select Computer Configuration > Software Settings > Software Installation.
3) Right-click on the Software Installation container.
4) Select the New > Package commands from the context menu.
5) Select the Flash Player MSI and select Open.
6) Choose to assign Flash Player.
7) Select OK.
You can see that the instructions to assign Flash Player to a user or to a computer are similar. The main
difference is selecting the user or computer configuration in step two.

Flash Player Catalog for Microsoft System Center Updates Publisher

If you are using Microsoft System Center Updates Publisher (SCUP) 4.5, you can import the Adobe Flash
Player Catalog to deploy the Adobe Flash Player ActiveX control and Plug-in via WSUS 3.0 SP2.
Perform the following steps:
1) Start the Microsoft System Center Updates Publisher 4.5.
2) Right-click System Center Updates Publisher and select Settings.
3) Click Add.
4) In Add Catalog, provide location of the CAB file and complete the other fields as outlined in the
remainder of this procedure:

14
 CONFIGURING SMS
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/distribution/win/AdobeFlashPlayerCata‐
log_SCUP.cab
5) Right click System Center Updates Publisher and select import update(s).
6) Select Bulk catalog import.
7) Click Next.
8) Select Accept on the next dialog box; this imports the catalog.
9) Click Close. Now all updates available in the catalog can be viewed in the SCUP console.
10) Right click on each update to set the publish flag.
11) After setting up the publish flags, right-click on System Center Updates Publisher and select publish
update(s), to publish all flagged updates to WSUS 3.0 SP2 Server.
12) Follow the wizard to publish the updates. Then click Next.
13) Click Close on the confirmation dialog to complete the wizard.
These updates will be available under the SCCM console at the next sync cycle and are ready to be
deployed.

Configuring SMS
If you plan to use SMS to deploy Adobe Flash Player using either the Adobe Catalog or the MSI file, follow
these instructions before starting the deployment process.
1) Start the SMS Administrator Console.
2) Expand the Site Hierarchy, select Site System, and double-click on the SMS site server. (In this
example the site server is \\MCNALLY)
3) Confirm that “Use this site system as a management point” is enabled.
4) If you have not yet selected the default management point, the following error message is
displayed.
Select Yes to continue, then select Component Configuration, and then select Management Point.
This server is now set to be the default Management Point for your site.
5) If necessary, reopen the Site System Properties. Then, on the Server Locator Point tab, enable “Use
this site system as a server locator point”. This setting helps the client find the site server.
6) Select Start, All Programs, Administrative Tools, Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
Notice that your website was added to IIS Manager.
7) As a final step, administrators may configure Discovery Methods in the SMS Administrative
Console, so that the site will generate collections (machines or user ID’s) automatically.

SMS and Adobe Catalog installation

SMS 2003 R2 includes two tools for software deployment—the Inventory Tool for Custom Updates (ITCU)
and the Custom Updates Publishing Tool (CUPT). This section briefly describes these tools and explains
how to use them to deploy Flash Player.

15
 SMS AND ADOBE CATALOG INSTALLATION
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

NOTE: Installation using SMS can fail if the player is being installed on a machine where the logged-in user
does not have administrative privileges. For information on resolving this issue, see the TechNote enti-
tled “Flash Player MSI installation will fail on machines that don't have administrative privileges” at
www.adobe.com/go/df875c9e.

System requirements for SMS deployment

To use SMS 2003 R2, the hierarchy, including clients, must be updated to SMS 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2).
In addition, in order to use the CUPT, Microsoft Management Console (MMC) 3.0 or higher is required.
CUPT is not required on the SMS Site Server, but it must be installed on at least one Windows XP machine.
The CUPT requires either SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server Express Edition for hosting its database. The
CUPT tool allows administrators to manage custom updates in the SMS system and to validate catalogs
before publishing them in SMS.

SMS tools for deploying custom updates

The ITCU is an inventory tool that works with custom update catalogs such as the Adobe Catalog. ITCU
creates custom collections, packages, and advertisements that are used for deploying the scan tools to
SMS clients in the enterprise. ITCU retrieves the catalog, in this case the custom updates catalog, from
an accessible SMS distribution point, performs he scan based on catalog data, insert the results of that
scan into Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), and reports the results via hardware inven-
tory.
Custom updates using the CUPT can take two forms—updates that are provided by third-party vendors
for software they produce, such as Adobe, and updates created internally that are unique to an environ-
ment. These updates are distributed as catalogs. Using third-party updates is a simple matter of down-
loading the catalogs and adding them to SMS.

Downloading the Flash Player catalog

Adobe provides the Flash Player Catalog, AdobeFlashPlayerCatalog.cab, for licensing and use with SMS
2003R2. Download the catalog from your licensed download page. After downloading the catalog,
import it into the CUPT and publish it to SMS. The rest of this section explains how to perform these tasks.

Importing the Flash Player catalog

Follow these steps to import the Adobe Flash Player Catalog into SMS:
1) Select Start, All Programs and choose Systems Management Server.
2) Select Custom Updates, then choose Publishing Tool to launch the Custom Updates Publishing Tool
console.
3) In the Actions pane, click Import Update(s).
4) Select Next to accept the default Single Catalog Import option.
A wizard asks for the location of the Adobe .cab files you downloaded.
5) Select Browse to locate and select the latest Adobe Catalog for SMS.

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 SMS AND ADOBE CATALOG INSTALLATION
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

CUPT validates the catalog and displays the Security Warning to confirm that you would like to ac‐
cept this catalog signed and published by Adobe.
6) Click Accept.
When the import is done, the Import Software Catalog Wizard confirmation dialog box shows the
number of updates imported.
7) Select Close.
8) To display Adobe software updates, click the Adobe node under Custom Updates Publishing Tool.

Publishing the Flash Player catalog

Follow these steps to publish the Adobe Flash Player Catalog:
1) In the tree pane of the CUPT console, select a software name (for example, Adobe Flash Player 10)
under the Adobe node.
The result pane shows the custom update software.
2) Select the desired software version in the result pane and then select Set Publish Flag in the Actions
pane. The flag should turn green.
NOTE: Initially, custom updates are not flagged in the Publish column. Each update must be flagged
for publication in order to be deployed. If an update is not flagged, it will not be included when the
request to publish is made.
To see details about a software version, double‐click it in the Result pane.
3) Select the Adobe node on the tree pane.
4) In the Actions pane, select Publish Updates.
5) Check Synchronize with Site Database of Systems Management Server and select Next.
The Publish Wizard summary dialog box indicates the update is ready to be published.
6) Select Next to publish the update to SMS.
When it completes, the Publish Wizard confirmation dialog box appears indicating the synchroniza‐
tion is successful.
7) Select Close.
The Custom Updates Publishing Tool closes.
8) Run the SMS Administrator Console. In the console tree, select the Software Updates, select the
Action menu, and click Refresh.
The list of software updates in the details pane should contain the custom updates you published.

Confirming successful publication

To confirm that the catalog was successfully published:
1) In the SMS Administrator Console, navigate to the Software Updates Tree and highlight software.
The right pane should show the same update that was published using the CUPT tool, under the type
“Custom Update.”
2) In the Software Updates Tree, highlight Software Updates.

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 SMS AND ADOBE CATALOG INSTALLATION
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

3) Navigate to the Advertisements Tree and highlight Custom Updates Tool. Right click and select
Re-Run Advertisement. Select OK on the mandatory assignment pop-up note.
Advertisement is manually initiated and Scan for Custom Updates occurs on all clients. This scan
takes a period of time to complete. Forcing makes it occur immediately.
You can view scan progress by going to System Status, Advertisement Status, Custom Updates Tool
and Highlight Site in right pane. Right‐click on ”Show Messages”, and select “All”. This displays the
current status of the Custom Update scan and install.
4) Navigate to the Reporting Tree and select Reports. Sort reports in right pane by category. Scroll
down to Software Update Compliance category.
5) Select Compliance by Product Report. Leave the Product field blank and select Custom Update for
the Type value.
The Software Compliance report generated in this step provides the number of machines where the
update is either successfully installed or missing.

Deploying the update

To distribute the update across your network using SMS:
1) In the SMS Administrator Console, navigate to the Software Updates tree and highlight Software
Updates. Right-click and select “Distribute Software Updates”.
2) When the wizard opens, select “Custom Update” for update type. For SMS package, choose New
and enter a Package Name of your choice (e.g. “Adobe Flash Player Update 2”).
3) Accept the default Program Name and enter "Adobe Inc." as the Organization.
4) Change Program Name to Custom Updates Tool (expedited).
5) Check all Adobe Updates that are listed. Press the Information Button to go to the Adobe website.
6) Select “I will download source files myself.”
7) Select Properties and choose Import. Select the appropriate MSI file from your local hard drive for
the update and click OK.
8) Check SMS Distribution Point, Collect Inventory, and Advertise. Click Browse and Select the collec-
tion to distribute to.
A program, package, and advertisement for the Update that you created should now be visible. Clients
poll on an hourly interval, and it take up to an hour for the change to fully propagate. To expedite this
process, go to Control Panel, Systems Management, and Actions on the clients. Highlight each action, and
click “Initiate Action” to force the client to poll the server.
Verify that the update was successfully installed:
1) Navigate to the Reporting Tree and select Reports. Scroll down to Software Update Compliance
category.
2) Select Compliance by Product Report. Leave the Product field blank and select Custom Update for
the Type value.
In the generated report, you should see that all systems where the update was applicable are now
compliant (have installed the update).

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 INTERACTIVE MSI INSTALLATION USING SMS
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

To see which systems were not able to install the update, check the software updates node of the gener-
ated report to determine Requested Systems (systems that are eligible for update) versus Compliant
Systems (systems that were able to install the update).

Additional resources
The following sites provide additional information about deploying custom updates with SMS.
• Systems Management Server 2003 Concepts, Planning, and Deployment Guide at www.micro-
soft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sms/sms2003/cpdg
• Deploying Custom Software Updates with SMS 2003 R2 at technet.microsoft.com/en-us/maga-
zine/cc162463.aspx

Interactive MSI installation using SMS

This section describes how to install Flash Player using the MSI installer and the Microsoft Systems
Management Server (SMS) 3.0 Console. If you prefer to do a command line installation, see Command
line MSI installations.
The following instructions assume the following system requirements:
• Windows 2003 Server (r2)
• SQL Server 2000 (SP4)
• SMS 2003 (SMS 3.0)
• Active Directory
• IIS (Microsoft Internet Information Server)
• BITS (Background Information Transfer Service)
• Flash Player MSI
These instructions also assume that you have already installed and configured SMS 3.
NOTE: Installation using SMS can fail if the player is being installed on a machine where the logged-in user
does not have administrative privileges. For information on resolving this issue, see the TechNote enti-
tled “Flash Player MSI installation will fail on machines that don't have administrative privileges” at
www.adobe.com/go/df875c9e.
1) Start the SMS Administrator Console.
2) Expand the Site Database.
3) Right-click on Packages and select New > Package.
4) On the Package Properties General tab, name your package. You can also include additional data,
such as the version number, publisher, language, and comments.
5) On the Data Source tab, enable “This package contains source files”. Click Set and browse to the
network location where your source files reside. For this example, the Flash Player MSI was saved
on the local C:\ drive.
6) On the Data Access tab, select “Access distribution folder through common SMS package share”
and click OK.

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 COMMAND LINE MSI INSTALLATIONS
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

7) To make your Distribution Points (locations where SMS packages are stored), expand Packages,
right-click on Distribution Points and select New > Distribution Points.
8) Select Next to start the Distribution Point wizard. Select the servers to which you want to copy the
package and then click Finish.
9) Right-click on Programs and select New > Program. This creates the program that will execute your
deployment commands.
10) In the General tab, name your program and type in the command line information. In this example,
we named the program “install” and then used the following command:
msiexec /i install_flash_player_active_x.msi /qn
11) To designate the conditions under which the application will be installed, select the Environment
tab. In this example, the conditions are, “Only when a user is logged on,” “Run with administrative
rights,” and “Runs with UNC name”.
12) To make an advertisement that will apply the package program to the collection at a set time,
right-click on the package and select All Tasks > Distribute Software.
13) Select your Distribution Points and click Next.
14) When asked “Do you want to advertise from this package?” choose Yes, then click Next.
15) Select the program to advertise, then click Next. For this example, we named the program “install”.
16) At this point, you can select the Collection (designated group of machines that you want to target).
In the Advertisement Target pane, select, “Advertise this program to an existing collection” and
select Browse. For this example, we selected “All Windows XP Systems.”
17) Select the default for the Advertisement Name, or change the name, then click Next.
18) Specify whether the advertisement should apply to subcollections, then click Next.
19) Specify when the program will be advertised, then click Next. This allows you to advertise a
program after hours when users are not on their computers.
20) You are now ready to assign your program to your collection. Select “Yes. Assign the program,”
then click Next
21) Look at the Details before clicking Finish.
If your deployment is successful, you will see a message that says, “Program About to Run”.

Command line MSI installations

The MSI installer is provided for administrative installations using software such as Microsoft Systems
Management Server (SMS). An administrative installation is the first step in preparing an MSI installer for
deployment over a network. This section discusses how to deploy Flash Player over a Windows network
using msiexec and the MSI installer. If you prefer to do an interactive installation using the SMS Console,
see Interactive MSI installation using SMS.
NOTE: Installation using SMS can fail if the player is being installed on a machine where the logged-in user
does not have administrative privileges. For information on resolving this issue, see the TechNote enti-
tled “Flash Player MSI installation will fail on machines that don't have administrative privileges” at
www.adobe.com/go/df875c9e.

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 COMMAND LINE MSI INSTALLATIONS
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

To run an administrative installation, use the /a command line switch. For example, to run the Flash
Player ActiveX control installer in interactive administrator mode, you would use this syntax:
msiexec /a "install_flash_player_11_activeX.msi"
NOTE: The examples in the rest of this chapter use the ActiveX control filename. If you are installing the
browser plug-in, simply substitute the correct filename in your installation.
On some machine configurations, spaces in the MSI filename interfere with running the installer from
the command line, even with quotes around it. If you rename the MSI file for any reason, do not use any
spaces in the filename.
When started as shown above, the installer runs through its admin UI sequence, involving a series of
dialog boxes. The first dialog box is a simple welcome screen, and the next dialog prompts for the
network location that you want to install to.
Click Next in the Welcome dialog to open the Network Location dialog, then click Install in the dialog box
to deploy the admin tree to a network share.
NOTE: The admin install includes only those files contained within the MSI file itself. Other support files
required by the installation such as bootstrap files, MSI runtime installers, or patches, should be copied
to the shared folder by some other means of your choice (manually, with a script, batch file, and so on).
Once the admin install is deployed to the shared folder, there are multiple options available to install the
product onto a workstation. These are discussed in the rest of this section.

Manually launch the installer on the client

One easy way to pull the installation from an administrative image is to run it manually, by sitting at the
client machine and launching it interactively from the site on which it is being shared. You could do this
either by double-clicking the bootstrap file, or by double-clicking the MSI file. The bootstrap file is the
recommended one to use, as it automatically installs the required version of the MSI runtime first, if
needed, before launching the MSI file in turn.
NOTE: If you've renamed the MSI file to avoid command line problems with spaces in the filename, the
bootstrap file will no longer work, because the bootstrap file is looking for a specific hard-coded file-
name. In this case, run the MSI file directly instead.

Launch the installer on the client using quiet mode

If you don't need to customize the installation options, then you can run the installation non-interac-
tively. This method requires with a command line switch, as shown below. When run in this mode, the
default options are used for all items that would be presented as choices in the interactive install.
msiexec /i "install_flash_player_11_activeX.msi" /qn
The simple command line syntax shown above works in most cases, but other command line elements
and switches are available. A more comprehensive version of the syntax looks like this (to be entered all
on one line):
%Comspec% /c msiexec /i "\\network
path\install_flash_player_11_activeX.msi" /qn
In both cases, the final /qn switch must be on the same line as the rest of the command.

21
 PERFORMING A BACKGROUND UPDATE
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The arguments used in the command line example above are described below.
• %Comspec% is an environment variable provided by Windows. It points to the command inter-
preter, cmd.exe.
• /c is a switch passed to cmd.exe telling the shell to wait until the msiexec.exe command completes
before proceeding. Without this switch, the shell will execute subsequent commands before the
current command finishes.
• msiexec.exe is the Windows installer runtime. When you double-click an MSI file (for example,
foo.msi) you are implicitly running msiexec /i foo.msi.
• /i instructs MSIEXEC to install the MSI file listed after the switch. There is also an /x switch that
uninstalls the MSI file specified after the /x switch.
• /qn specifies a user interface level for the action. The /qn switch suppresses all prompts and is
therefore useful for silent installations. When attempting to debug, you can switch to /qb, which
displays basic modal dialogs.
For more information about command line options available for msiexec, see “Command-Line Options”
in the MSDN Library at msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa367988.aspx.

Reinstalling a Flash Player using a batch routine

If you need to uninstall and reinstall the Flash Player, you can use a batch file like this one:
REM Begin quietInstall.bat
REM Uninstall Flash Player ActiveX
%Comspec% /c msiexec /x "\\network
path\install_flash_player_9_activeX.msi" /qn
REM Install Flash Player ActiveX
%Comspec% /c msiexec /i "\\network
path\install_flash_player_9_activeX.msi" /qn
REM End quietInstall.bat

Performing a background update

During a standard Flash Player update, a dialog box announces the availability of the update to the user
to let the user either accept, postpone, or reject the update. If the user accepts the update, the user's
default browser is launched to Adobe's site to download the latest version. Once downloaded the user
can install the update immediately or at a later date. This type of update is called a notification update.
On Microsoft Windows and macOS, a Flash Player background update installs the update silently in the
background, without any user interaction. A background update installs the ActiveX control (IE), NPAPI
plug-in (Firefox, Safari) and PPAPI plug-in (Chromium-based browsers) players when appropriate.
For some browser types, if the user has a browser open at the time of an update, the browser does not
use the updated player until a new browser instance launches. Browser instances open during the
update process continue to use the previous player version until they are restarted.
Background update is disabled by default. Based on the install type, the background update varies:

22
 PERFORMING A BACKGROUND UPDATE
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

MSI and PKG installers do not provide update options and therefore do not set the update options in the
mms.cfg file. To set the update option when installing Flash Player using the MSI or PKG installer, deploy
a custom mms.cfg file with the desired update options to the following locations:
• 32-bit Windows: C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash
• 64-bit Windows: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash
• macOS: /Library/Application Support
All other installer types:
During installation, you can select the update option (silent, notification, or do not update). If you previ-
ously opted in to background updates, and have not uninstalled the player (see note in the uninstall
section about update options being reset when the player is uninstalled), the update options will not be
displayed.
An installation performed by the MSI or PKG installer does not create or update these entries in the
mms.cfg file.
When the Flash Player is installed, it also installs a Windows 32-bit service application and task or, for a
Mac, a LaunchDaemon. When all player types are removed, the Windows service and task, or Mac
LaunchDaemon, are also removed.
If background updates are enabled, the task or LaunchDaemon check for an update once every 24 hours.
However, if no network or internet connection is available at the time of the check, the check occurs
again every hour until a connection is detected. After the next successful check, another check does not
occur for 24 hours.
The update task runs as the SYSTEM user, not as the current user. The check runs regardless of who is
logged on, and runs even if no one is logged on. The only requirement is that the system has an internet
connection. It is the responsibility of the system administrator to ensure that processes running as the
SYSTEM user account are correctly configured to use any appropriate corporate proxies.

Background updates from an internal server

You can use the background update mechanism to host and deploy updates on internal networks.
Deploying Flash Player from an internal server requires obtaining the Adobe Runtimes / Reader Distribu-
tion License if you don’t have a distribution license.

Prerequisites
• A server with the following configuration:
– Open port 443 for HTTPS requests.
– A valid SSL certificate, issued by a trusted third-party certificate authority, for HTTPS access
on port 443.
• The ability to store files on the server in an Adobe-specified folder structure (outlined later in this
section).
• The ability to deploy mms.cfg configuration files to clients on the network.

23
 PERFORMING A BACKGROUND UPDATE
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

Configure the server

1) In your server root, create the following structure: /pub/flashplayer/update/current/sau
2) Download the Background Update Resources archive from the Adobe Flash Player Distribution
page using the link in the email you received when licensing Flash Player.
A link to the Background Update Resources archive is also posted on the https://www.ado‐
be.com/licensing/distribution/strategies/sms.html page.
3) Unpack the downloaded .cab archive. The archive contains the required files in the appropriate
format and directory structure as required by Flash Player.
4) Copy the contents of the unpacked archive to the /sau directory created in step 1.
5) When finished, you should see something similar to the following:
Current release:
https://your.server.com/pub/flashplayer/update/current/sau/currentmajor.
xml
https://your.server.com/pub/flashplayer/update/current/sau/11/xml/versio
n.xml
https://your.server.com/pub/flashplayer/update/current/sau/11/install/in
stall_all_win_ax_sgn.z
https://your.server.com/pub/flashplayer/update/current/sau/11/install/in
stall_all_win_pl_sgn.z
https://your.server.com/pub/flashplayer/update/current/sau/11/install/in
stall_all_mac_pl_sgn.z
https://your.server.com/pub/flashplayer/update/current/sau/20/xml/versio
n.xml
https://your.server.com/pub/flashplayer/update/current/sau/20/install/in
stall_all_win_ax_sgn.z
https://your.server.com/pub/flashplayer/update/current/sau/20/install_al
l_win_pep_sgn.z
https://your.server.com/pub/flashplayer/update/current/sau/20/install/in
stall_all_win_pl_sgn.z
https://your.server.com/pub/flashplayer/update/current/sau/21/xml/versio
n.xml
https://your.server.com/pub/flashplayer/update/current/sau/21/install/in
stall_all_win_ax_sgn.z
https://your.server.com/pub/flashplayer/update/current/sau/21/install_al
l_win_pep_sgn.z
https://your.server.com/pub/flashplayer/update/current/sau/21/install/in
stall_all_win_pl_sgn.z

Configure clients
• Create an mms.cfg file with the following entries (replacing your.server.com with the name of your
server):
AutoUpdateDisable=0
SilentAutoUpdateEnable=1
SilentAutoUpdateServerDomain=your.server.com
• Deploy Flash Player 11.3 or higher.

24
 WINDOWS REGISTRY KEYS
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

• Deploy the mms.cfg to all clients for which you want the Background Updater redirected to your
internal server.
The SilentAutoUpdateServerDomain server name and the CN name on the SSL cert must match (for
production and test servers).
When hosting the Background Update resources locally, Flash Player will only update in the background.
Users will not see an update notification informing them an update is available. If the Background Update
resources are not hosted locally and the client machines are configured for Background Updates, they
may occasionally receive notifications that an update is available instead of being updated through the
Background Updates.

Windows registry keys

In addition to the registry keys you can use to determine the installed version of a player (see Player
versions), Flash Player creates other registry keys when it is installed or registered. These keys are
summarized in the Flash Player TechNote entitled “Flash Player | Windows registry permissions”.

PKG Installer for macOS

To distribute Flash Player across the enterprise, use the PKG installer in conjunction with your package
management tool of choice to install Flash Player to the current volume, a non-boot volume, or a disk
image to be replicated across your enterprise.
1) Extract the Adobe Flash Player package installer (Install Adobe Flash Player.pkg) from the .DMG file.
2) Import the .PKG file into your package management tool of choice and distribute Flash Player
across your enterprise.

Silent installation of Flash Player (using .pkg installer package)

Use the .pkg installer package to install the Flash Player silently, using the installer utility, to the current
volume, a non-boot volume, or a disk image to be replicated across your enterprise.

App installer for macOS

Double-click the DMG image file to extract the .app installer bundle and follow the guided installation
instructions.
NOTE: Flash Player 11 or later is not supported on Power PCs.

25
 CUSTOMIZING PLAYER BEHAVIOR
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

Silent installation of Flash Player (using .app installer bundle)

Do the following to silently install Flash Player 11.3 or later on macOS:
1) Extract the Adobe Flash Player installer bundle (Install Adobe Flash Player.app) from
the .DMG file.
2) Open a terminal window and change to the directory where the.app file is saved.
For example, if the .app file is saved on the Desktop of the current user, type: cd ~/Desktop
3) Run the installer contained in the .app file using the following command:
sudo ./Install Adobe Flash Player.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Flash
Player Install Manager -install
4) Type the password to proceed with the installation.
NOTE: You need to be a super user to proceed with the installation.

Customizing player behavior

After you deploy the player, you can install a privacy and security configuration file (mms.cfg) to specify
rules about Adobe Flash Player security. The file controls security-related behavior of the player after
installation.
The primary purpose for the mms.cfg file is to support the corporate and enterprise environments where
the IT department would like to install Flash Player across the enterprise, while enforcing some common
global security and privacy settings (supported with installation-time configuration choices). The
mms.cfg file can be used to control data loading operations, user privacy, auto-update behavior, back-
ground update behavior, and local file security.
For detailed information about customizing player behavior, see Administration.

Troubleshooting installation problems

The following TechNotes address installation problems you may encounter.
• Troubleshoot Adobe Flash Player installation for Windows (www.adobe.com/go/tn_19166)
• Troubleshoot Adobe Flash Player for Intel-based Macs (www.adobe.com/go/2dda3d81)
• Safe versions security restrictions when installing Flash Player (Internet Explorer on Windows)
(http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/402/kb402435.html)

Additional resources
For answers to questions regarding Flash Player licensing and deployment, see Adobe Player Licensing at
www.adobe.com/licensing/distribution and the player Distribution FAQ at
www.adobe.com/licensing/distribution/faq.

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 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
CHAPTER 4 PLAYER INSTALLATION

To receive notification of when a new version of Flash Player is available, register for the Security Bulletin
and Advisories email notification at helpx.adobe.com/security.html.
Notifications are also posted on the Flash Player user forums. See
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/890491 for more information.
The following sites outside Adobe provide general information on deploying software on Windows
systems:
• Windows Installer Resources for System Administrators at www.install-
site.org/pages/en/msi/admins.htm.
• Applying Small Updates by Patching an Administrative Image in the MSDN library at msdn.micro-
soft.com/en-us/library/aa367573.aspx.
• Applying Small Updates by Reinstalling the Product in the MSDN library at msdn.micro-
soft.com/en-us/library/aa367575.aspx.
• For information on detecting the version of Adobe Flash Player from a website, see the “Detection
and Installation” section at the Flash Player Developer Center (www.adobe.com/devnet/flash-
player/detection_installation.html).

27
 ENTERPRISE ENABLEMENT
CHAPTER 5 ADMINISTRATION

Administration

Enterprise Enablement
To help enterprises prepare for Flash Player’s end of life (EOL), Adobe is making several changes to Flash
Player’s behavior and functionality.
Starting with the Flash Player June 2020 release, enterprises can configure Flash Player to only load
content from a list of allowed URLs. Doing so has multiple benefits:
• Explicitly allow Flash Player content that you trust and block all other Flash content. While many
browsers provide the option to block Flash Player on a per site basis, some do not. With this change,
it won’t matter which browser is being used because Flash Player itself will keep a list of allowed
URLs.
• Any allowed content will continue to run post EOL, while all other Flash Player content is blocked
by default. Please be aware that enabling content to run post EOL is not advised and done at your
own risk.
Adobe recommends all enterprise customers requiring access to Flash Player content post EOL
engage with our distribution and support partner HARMAN, to obtain commercial support solu-
tions that include security updates.
• Provides logging capability to identify Flash content being used by client systems. We recommend
reaching out to our distribution and support partner, HARMAN, to help identify comprehensive
solutions for enterprises with large client bases.
Enterprise Enablement includes the preferences AllowListPreview, TraceOutputEcho, EnableAllowList,
and AllowListRootMovieOnly. In addition, we recommend you review the section “Suppressing EOL
Uninstall Prompts” for information on optional preferences that may affect your users in 2020.

Suppressing EOL Uninstall Prompts

In the latter half of 2020, as part of Flash Player's end of life (EOL) process, Adobe will start prompting
customers to uninstall Flash Player. This prompt is optional and can be dismissed by the end user.
To reduce friction in a managed installation environment, administrators can set either of the following
properties in the client's mms.cfg to disable the prompt from appearing:
AutoUpdateDisable = 1
Or
EOLUninstallDisable = 1
Many administrators have already disabled automatic updates for Flash Player by setting AutoUpdate-
Disable=1. If this is true in your environment, your users will not see the uninstall prompt. If automatic
updates are enabled (the default setting) and you would like to suppress the uninstall prompts from
appearing for your clients, set EOLUninstallDisable = 1.

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 SUPPRESSING EOL UNINSTALL PROMPTS
CHAPTER 5 ADMINISTRATION

EOLUninstallDisable
EOLUninstallDisable = [ 0, 1 ](0 = false, 1 = true)
Disabled (0) by default. EOLUninstallDisable =1 allows system administrators to disable uninstall prompts
by Flash Player scheduled to start appearing in the second half of 2020. When enabled (1), users can still
uninstall Flash Player, however unsolicited prompts by Adobe to uninstall Flash Player will be
suppressed.

AllowListPreview
AllowListPreview = [ 0, 1 ](0 = false, 1 = true)
AllowListPreview is disabled (0) by default. When EnableAllowList = 1, requests matching patterns are
allowed, and all others are blocked. After Flash Player EOL, this setting will be ignored.
Blocked requests (but not allowed requests) are logged using trace().
*** EnableAllowList blocks 'http://www.example.com/blocked.swf'. ***
When AllowListPreview = 1, all requests are allowed, and trace() is used to log whether each request
would be allowed or blocked by the current AllowList:
*** AllowListPreview: AllowList allows
'http://www.example.com/allow.swf'. ***
*** AllowListPreview: AllowList blocks
'http://www.example.com/blocked.swf'. ***
NOTE: AllowListPreview is ignored unless EnableAllowList=1 is specified.

Example:
An admin adds the following to MMS.CFG:
# duplicate actionscript console output
# in browser's console for javascript TraceOutputEcho=1
# Enable the AllowList feature EnableAllowList=1
# Normally, the allow list blocks URL requests
# unless the url matches a pattern in the list.
# In preview mode, all requests go unblocked,
# but console output is written for each request
# indicating which pattern it matched or that
# no match was found.
AllowListPreview=1

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CHAPTER 5 ADMINISTRATION

trace() statements from the player now appear in the browser's JavaScript console ( each trace() is pref-
aced with SWF: to distinguish it from other console output):

TraceOutputEcho
TraceOutputEcho = [ 0, 1 ](0 = false, 1 = true)
Disabled by default. TraceOutputEcho=1 will cause ActionScript trace (msg:String) statements to be
duplicated in the browser’s JavaScript console using console.log (“SWF: “ + msg).
Example:

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 SUPPRESSING EOL UNINSTALL PROMPTS
CHAPTER 5 ADMINISTRATION

# trace() statements are echoed in the browser’s javascript console

# with console.log().
TraceOutputEcho=1
# Enable the AllowList feature EnableAllowList=1
# In preview mode, the allow list won’t block url requests,
# but for each url request, it will trace() whether
# the current whitelist would block or allow the request
AllowListPreview=1
Would produce trace() output in the browser :
SWF: *** AllowListPreview: allow list allows
'http://www.example.com/allow.swf'.
*** SWF: *** AllowListPreview: allow list blocks
'http://www.example.com/blocked.swf'. ***

EnableAllowList
EnableAllowList = [ 0, 1 ](0 = false, 1 = true)
Disabled by default. Allows system administrators to allow Flash Player to only load content from a set
of allowed URLs. After Flash Player EOL, EnableAllowList will default to true and the MMS.CFG setting will
be ignored.

Troubleshooting
Flash Player typically does not provide visible runtime errors to end-users, and users will not see an error
message when a request is blocked by the EnableAllowList flag while using the generally available Flash
Player version.
Errors related to the allow list feature can be logged to flashlog.txt by using Debug version of Flash Player
with logging configured, by setting ErrorReportingEnable=1 in mm.cfg. As of the time of this writing, we
recommend Firefox and Internet Explorer as the easiest browsers to configure for debugging and logging
to the filesystem.
See the following guide on configuring the debugger version of Flash Player for details:
https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/configure-debugger-version-flash-player.html
Once enabled, error messages will be logged to flashlog.txt, and will look like this:
Example – Root Movie Blocked
*** EnableAllowList Activated - Root Movie Blocked ***
No AllowListURLPattern matches ‘https://www.example.com/movie.swf
In this instance, the parent webpage attempted to embed a SWF, but no AllowListUrlPattern entry allows
https://www.example.com/movie.swf to be loaded.
Example – Root Movie Loaded, Subsequent Request Blocked
*** EnableAllowList Activated - Request Blocked ***
No AllowListURLPattern matches 'http://www.example.com/intro.html'

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CHAPTER 5 ADMINISTRATION

In this instance, the parent SWF was permitted to load, but at runtime, the SWF attempted to navigate
to http://www.example.com/intro.html. The navigation was not permitted by a matching AllowListUrl-
Pattern entry, and was blocked.

AllowListRootMovieOnly
AllowListRootMovieOnly = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
Disabled by default. Only apply allow list restrictions to the parent SWF. Subsequent requests made from
the loaded SWF to arbitrary URLs are allowed.
In some instances, it may be desirable to restrict Flash Player to loading only a trusted set of parent
movies, but to then allow those movies to make arbitrary requests to other resources. This minimizes the
number of AllowListUrlPattern entries required, and provides administrators with a simple, flexible
option for narrowing what Flash content can be loaded in their environment.

AllowListUrlPattern
AllowListUrlPattern = <scheme> ://<host>:<port>/<path>
<scheme> = ‘*’ | ‘http’ | ‘https’
<host> = <any char except ‘.’ and ‘*’>
<port> (optional) = ‘*’ | <any valid port number>
<path> = ‘/’ <any chars>
With EnableAllowList=1 set, administrators can then specify a discrete URL or pattern to allow.

Pattern Description

http://www.example.com/folder/ You can use an url as a match pattern,for instance, this

flash.swf pattern will match
http://www.example.com/folder/flash.swf but not
http://www.example.com/folder/file.txt.
http://www.example.com/folder/ You can omit path components to match a set of urls with
a common prefix, for instance, this pattern will match
http://www.example.com/folder/flash.swf and
http://www.example.com/folder/file.txt.
http://www.example.com/ You can omit the path entirely, for instance, this pattern
will match any url with the origin
http://www.example.com:80/.
NOTE: The default port for HTTP is 80, so
http://www.example.com:80/ is equivalent to
http://www.example.com/.

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Pattern Description

https://www.example.com/ This pattern will match any url with the origin
https://www.example.com:443/.
NOTE: The default port for HTTPS is 443, so
https://www.example.com:443/ is equivalent to
https://www.example.com/.
*://www.example.com/ The wildcard scheme ( *: ) will match HTTP or HTTPS, for
instance, this pattern will match either
http://www.example.com:80/ or
https://www.example.com:443/.
file://www.example.com/ This pattern will match FILE: requests to
www.example.com.
http://*.example.com/ You can use a leading wildcard to match all subdomains of
a domain, for instance, http://*.example.com/ matches
the subdomains of example.com.
NOTE: The wildcard must be followed by at least
two labels, so http://*/ is not valid, nor is http://*.com/.
blob:* A wildcard can be used to allow all requests using the
specified scheme.
NOTE: http:*, https:* and *:* are not permitted as they
are overly general.
http://192.168.1.20/ The host can be an IPv4 Address instead of a domain
name. Wildcards are not supported with IPv4 Addresses.
http://[::1]/ The host can be an IPv6 Address instead of a domain
name. Wildcards are not supported with IPv6 Address.
NOTE: More than one string can represent the same IPv6
address, for instance, “[::1]” and “[0::1]” are equivalent,
but patterns will be matched using string comparison, so
(“[::1]” != “[0::1]”).
https:* A wildcard can be used instead of a host and/or path, for
instance, this pattern will match all HTTPS requests.
NOTE: Any scheme can be used with scheme:*, for
instance, blob:* to match all BLOB’s. In contrast, pattern
specifying a host and/or path must use one of the
following schemes : { *, HTTP, HTTPS, FILE }.
file:///folder/file.txt Local file requests can omit the host.
http://user:[email protected] User info is ignored, so this pattern is the same as
om/ http://www.example.com/.

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Pattern Description

http://www.example.com/flash.s Query strings are ignored, so this pattern is the same as

wf?query http://www.example.com/flash.swf?query.
http://www.example.com/flash.s Fragments are ignored, so this pattern is the same as
wf#fragment http://www.example.com/flash.swf.

Examples:
Strict - Load Only Single Specified File, Require HTTPS
Restricts Flash Player to loading only a trusted set of parent movies, but allows those movies to make
arbitrary requests to other resources. This minimizes the number of AllowListUrlPattern entries
required, while providing compatibility for the target application.
mms.cfg
EnableAllowList = 1
AllowListUrlPattern=https://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/application.swf
How requests would be handled:
Allowed
https://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/application.swf
Denied
http://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/application.swf
https://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/application_child.swf
https://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/other_resource.jpg
http://example.com/randomContent.xml
Strict – Load Only Content from Specified Folder, Require HTTPS
Allow Flash Player to load any content from a specific directory, over HTTPS only. Any child content
loaded by the parent SWF outside this directory must be explicitly allowed in order to load.
mms.cfg
EnableAllowList=1
AllowListUrlPattern=https://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/
Strict Folder Access, HTTP and HTTPS
Allow Flash Player to load any content from a specific directory, over HTTPS only. Any child content
loaded by the parent SWF outside this directory must be explicitly whitelisted in order to load.
mms.cfg
EnableAllowList=1
AllowListUrlPattern=https://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/
AllowListUrlPattern=http://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/
How requests would be handled:
Allowed

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https://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/application.swf
https://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/application_child.swf
https://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/other_resource.jpg
Denied
https://my.intranet.com/otherApp/other_resource.txt
http://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/application.swf
http://example.com/randomContent.xml
Intermediate – Parent content must be loaded from trusted directory, HTTPS and HTTP
Allow Flash Player to load content from a specific trusted directory. Any subsequent content requested
by the trusted application will not be subject to allow list restrictions.
mms.cfg
EnableAllowList=1
AllowListRootMovieOnly=1
AllowListUrlPattern=https://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/
AllowListUrlPattern=http://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/
How the initial request for Flash content would be handled:
Allowed
https://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/application.swf
http://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/application.swf
Denied
http://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/application.swf
https://my.intranet.com/otherApp/other_resource.txt
http://example.com/randomContent.xml
Once loaded, if the SWF at https://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/application.swf (or its children) made
subsequent requests for resources available on the network, they would be permitted regardless of
allow list restrictions.
Allowed (when requested by the permitted Flash instance):
http://my.intranet.com/legacyApp/application.swf
https://my.intranet.com/otherApp/other_resource.txt
http://example.com/randomContent.xml

Privacy and security settings (mms.cfg)

Network administrators can install Adobe Flash Player across the enterprise while enforcing common
global security and privacy settings (supported with installation-time configuration choices). To do this,
you install a file named mms.cfg on each client machine.
The mms.cfg file is a text file. When Flash Player starts, it reads its settings from this file, and uses them
to manage functionality as described in the following sections.

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mms.cfg file location

Windows
Assuming a default Windows installation, Flash Player looks for the mms.cfg file in the following
system directories:
• 32-bit Windows - %WINDIR%\System32\Macromed\Flash
• 64-bit Windows - %WINDIR%\SysWow64\Macromed\Flash
NOTE: The %WINDIR% location represents the Windows system directory, such as C:\WINDOWS.

macOS
/Library/Application Support/Macromedia

Linux
/etc/adobe/

NOTE: Unlike Windows and macOS, the Linux player is in a directory named adobe, not in one named
Macromed or Macromedia.

Google Chrome
Google Chrome uses its own version of the mms.cfg file, saved at:
• macOS: /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Pepper
Data/Shockwave Flash/System
• Win: %USERNAME%/AppData/Local/Google/Chrome/User Data/Default/Pepper Data/Shockwave
Flash/System
The System directory may not exist. If not, create it manually.
NOTE: Update-related directives for Adobe Flash Player are not honored by Google Chrome, because
Chrome Adobe Flash Player as a component of Chrome, distributed by Google through the Chrome
update mechanism.

Third-party administration tools such as Microsoft System Management Server may be used to replicate
the configuration file to the user's computer.
Use the standard techniques provided by your operating system to hide or otherwise prevent end users
from seeing or modifying the mms.cfg file on their systems.

Setting options in the mms.cfg file

This section discusses how to format and set options in the mms.cfg file. The value of some mms.cfg
options can be queried through the use of ActionScript. When this is possible, the ActionScript API is
noted in the option’s description.

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File format
The format of the mms.cfg file is a series of name = value pairs separated by carriage returns. If a param-
eter is not set in the file, Flash Player either assumes a default value, or lets the user specify the setting
via pop-up questions, settings dialog boxes or the settings manager. (For more information on how the
user can specify values for certain options, see User‐configured settings.)
The options in the mms.cfg file use the following syntax:
ParameterName = ParameterValue
Only one option per line is supported. Specify Boolean parameters either as "true" or "false", or as
1 or 0, or as "yes" or "no".
Comments are allowed. They start with a # symbol and go to the end of the line. This symbol can be used
to insert comments or to temporarily disable directives.
Whitespace is allowed, including blank lines or spaces around equal signs ( = ).

Character encoding
Some mms.cfg directives may have values that include non-ASCII characters, so the character encoding
of the file is significant in those cases. We support a standard text file convention: the file may use either
UTF-8 or UTF-16 Unicode encoding, either of which must be indicated by including a "byte order mark"
(BOM) character at the beginning of the file; if no BOM is found, Flash Player assumes that the file is
encoded using the current system default code page. Many popular text editors, including Windows
Notepad and Mac TextEdit, are capable of writing UTF-8 or UTF-16 files with BOMs, although you may
need to specify that as an option when saving.

Summary of mms.cfg options

The following table summarizes the options available in mms.cfg, in alphabetical order.

Option Description

AllowUserLocalTrust Prevent users from designating any files on

local file systems as trusted.
AssetCacheSize Specify a hard limit (in MB) for the amount of
local storage that Flash Player uses for
common Flash components.
AutoUpdateDisable Prevent Adobe Flash Player from automatically
checking for and installing updated versions.
AutoUpdateInterval Specify how often to check for an updated
version of Adobe Flash Player.
This setting is for notification updates. It is not
for background updates.
Do not use this setting if the intent is to use
Background Updates to update the client
systems.

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Option Description

AVHardwareDisable Prevent SWF files from accessing webcams or

microphones. Not applicable on Google
Chrome or Microsoft Edge browsers.
AVHardwareEnabledDomain Allow SWF files from a specific domain or IP
address to access webcams or microphones.
Not applicable on Google Chrome or Microsoft
Edge browsers.
DisableDeviceFontEnumeration Prevent information on installed fonts from
being provided.
EnableInsecureActiveXNavigateToURL In Flash Player 32 and above, override the
strict enforcement of Same Origin Policy with
requests made from NavigateToURL() in the
ActiveX Flash Player for Microsoft Internet
Explorer and Edge on Windows.
DisableHardwareAcceleration Disable hardware acceleration.
DisableNetworkAndFilesystemInHostApp Disable networking or file system access of any
kind.
DisableProductDownload Disable downloading of native code and
applications, digitally signed and delivered by
Adobe.
DisableSockets Disable the use of the Socket.connect()and
XMLSocket.connect()methods.
EnableInsecureActiveXMHTMLSupport In Flash Player 32 and above, override the
default behavior of restricting the ability to
launch Flash Player from within an MTHML
(.mhtml or .mht) document.
EnableInsecureByteArrayShareable In Flash Player 30 and above, override the
default behavior of restricting the shareable
property of the ActionScript ByteArray API
class.
EnableInsecureByteArrayShareableDomain In Flash Player 30 and above, override the
default behavior of restricting the shareable
property of the ActionScript ByteArray API
class on a per-domain basis.
EnableSocketsTo Create a list of servers to which socket
connections are allowed.

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Option Description

EnforceLocalSecurityInActiveXHostApp Enforce local security rules for a specified

application.
FileDownloadDisable Prevent the ActionScript FileReference API
from performing file downloads.
FileDownloadEnabledDomain Allow the ActionScript FileReference API to
perform file downloads from a specific domain
or IP address.
FileUploadDisable Prevent the ActionScript FileReference API
from performing file uploads.
FileUploadEnabledDomain Allow the ActionScript FileReference API to
upload files to a specific domain or IP address.
FullScreenDisable Disable SWF files playing via a browser plug-in
from being displayed in full-screen mode.
LegacyDomainMatching Allow SWF files produced for Flash Player 6
and earlier to execute an operation that has
been restricted in a newer versions of Flash
Player.
LocalFileLegacyAction Allow SWF files produced for Adobe Flash
Player 7 and earlier to access local files in a
way that has been restricted in newer versions
of Flash Player.
LocalFileReadDisable Prevent local SWF files from having read
access to files on local hard drives.
EnableInsecureLocalWithFileSystem Override the default behavior of disallowing
files loaded from the local filesystem to read
from the local filesystem.
LocalStorageLimit Specify a hard limit (in MB) on the amount of
local storage that Adobe Flash Player uses for
persistent shared objects stored by an
individual domain.
OverrideGPUValidation Overrides validation of the requirements
needed to implement GPU compositing.
ProductDisabled Creates a list of ProductManager applications
that users are not permitted to install or
launch.
ProtectedMode Enables the Protected mode feature.

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Option Description

ProtectedModeBrokerAllowListConfigFile Bypasses the prevented actions by creating a

white list of allowed actions (policies).
ProtectedModeBrokerLogfilePath Specifies the path to the log file where policy
violations are recorded.
RTMFPP2PDisable Specifies how the NetStream constructor
connects to a server when a value is specified
for peerID, the second parameter passed to
the constructor.
RTMFPTURNProxy Allow Adobe Flash Player make RTMFP
connections through a specified TURN proxy
server, in addition to normal UDP sockets.
SilentAutoUpdateEnable Allow Adobe Flash Player to install updates
silently in the background, with no user
interaction.
SilentAutoUpdateServerDomain For administrators deploying silent updates to
Adobe Flash Player from an internal server,
specify the hostname of the update server to
use.
SilentAutoUpdateVerboseLogging Enable logging of warning and error codes
during a background update.
ThirdPartyStorage Configure ability of third-party SWF files to
read and write locally persistent shared
objects.
UseWAVPlayer On Windows, use WAVAudio for playback
instead of Windows Core Audio APIs.
NetworkRequestTimeout On Windows, modify the default timeout for
network socket requests (in seconds).
EnableInsecureJunctionBehavior In Flash Player 14 and above, override the
default behavior of restricting write access to
paths that traverse junction files in Windows.
EnableLocalAppData Configure Flash Player to write LSOs to the
%LOCALAPPDATA% folder instead of
%APPDATA%.
DefaultLanguage Override Flash Player’s default language.
IEClickToPlayBlocked Provides domain block list functionality if
EnableIEClickToPlay has been turned on.

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Option Description

EnableIEClickToPlay Enable Flash Player click to play functionality in

Internet Explorer on Windows 7 and below
IEClickToPlayBypass Provides domain allow list functionality if
EnableIEClickToPlay has been turned on.
EventJitterMicroseconds Important mitigation for Spectre and
Meltdown style attacks (CVE-2017-5753,
CVE-2017-5715, CVE-2017-5754)
TimerJitterMicroseconds Important mitigation for Spectre and
Meltdown style attacks (CVE-2017-5753,
CVE-2017-5715, CVE-2017-5754).
InsecureJitterDisabledDomain Adding domains to this list disables important
mitigations for Spectre and Meltdown style
attacks (CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5715,
CVE-2017-5754), but may improve application
performance in some limited circumstances.
EOLUninstallDisable Allow system administrators to disable
uninstall prompts by Flash Player scheduled to
start appearing in the second half of 2020.
AllowListPreview Requires EnableAllowList=1. Requests that
would typically be blocked by the configured
allow list rules are logged, but the requests are
permitted.
TraceOutputEcho TraceOutputEcho=1 causes ActionScript trace
(msg:String) statements to be duplicated in the
browser’s JavaScript console using console.log
EnableAllowList Only allow Adobe Flash Player to load content
from URLs that match patterns defined by
AllowListUrlPattern directives in mms.cfg.
AllowListRootMovieOnly Only apply loading restrictions to the parent
SWF. Subsequent requests made from the
loaded SWF to arbitrary URLs are allowed.
AllowListUrlPattern Requires EnableAllowList=1. Specify a discrete
URL or pattern to allow Adobe Flash Player to
load content from.

This document describes mms.cfg options that let you do the following:
• Control access to camera, microphone, and system font information (see Privacy options).

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• Specify whether SWF files playing in a browser can be displayed in full-screen mode (see User inter‐
face option).
• Control access to the local file system (see Data loading and storage options).
• Specify settings for Flash Player auto-update (see Update options).
• Specify adjustments to Flash Player's default security model (see Security options).
• Specify whether low-level socket connections are allowed (see Socket connection options).
• Override settings related to GPU compositing (see GPU Compositing).
• Specify settings related to Peer-to-Peer connections using the RTMFP protocol (see RTMFP
options).
• Protected mode settings related to Flash Player security (See Protected mode options).
Where a setting has a default value, it is displayed in bold type.

Privacy options
Settings in this category let administrators disable access from Adobe Flash Player to connected
webcams and microphones; and disable the ability to access the list of fonts installed on a user's
computer.

AVHardwareDisable
AVHardwareDisable = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
If this value is set to 1, Adobe Flash Player files cannot access webcams or microphones. If this value is 0
(the default), the Settings Manager or Settings tabs let the user specify settings for access to webcams
and microphones. (See Privacy options.)
If this value is set to 1, the privacy pop-up dialog never appears. However, the user can still access the
Privacy tab and the Settings Manager, as well as tabs to let them designate which camera or microphone
an application can use. These settings appear functional, but any choices the user makes are ignored.
Also the recording level meter on the Microphone tab is disabled, and the Camera tab does not bring up
a thumbnail of what the camera is seeing.
NOTE: In ActionScript, an author can query the System.capabilities.avHardwareDisable prop-
erty to determine the value of this setting.

AVHardwareEnabledDomain
AVHardwareEnabledDomain = domain name or IP address
If the AVHardwareDisable value is set to 1, Adobe Flash Player is blocked from accessing webcams or
microphones. The AVHardwareEnabledDomain settings provide exceptions to that rule. Administra-
tors can specify an allow list of approved domain names or IP addresses to which data can be transmitted
using a webcam or microphone. If the active security context is in the list of domains and IP addresses,
then camera and microphone access will be allowed. Otherwise it will default to the behavior specified
by the AVHardwareDisable setting.
This value must be set to a string containing a full domain name or IP address. The string value must
exactly match the domain name or IP address to be enabled. Strings with wildcards such as *.adobe.com

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or 10.1.1.* are not supported. The mms.cfg file can contain multiple AVHardwareEnabledDomain
settings to allow access to multiple domains and IP addresses.
For example the following settings only allow access to cameras or microphones when connected to
servers with the domain name test.mydomain.com or the IP address 10.1.1.10:
AVHardwareDisable=1
AVHardwareEnabledDomain=test.mydomain.com
AVHardwareEnabledDomain=10.1.1.10

DisableDeviceFontEnumeration
DisableDeviceFontEnumeration = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
This setting controls whether the Font.enumerateFonts() method in ActionScript 3.0 and the
TextField.getFontList() method in ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0 return the list of fonts installed on a
user’s system. If this value is 1, information on installed fonts cannot be returned. If this value is 0 (the
default), information on installed fonts can be returned.

EnableInsecureActiveXNavigateToURL
EnableInsecureActiveXNavigateToURL = [0,1] (0=false, 1=true)
Allows Administrators to override the Flash Player 32 and above behavior of more strictly enforcing Same
Origin Policy with requests made from NavigateToURL() in the ActiveX Flash Player for IE and Edge on
Windows. For the vast majority of Flash content, this change should be transparent. Affected content will
generally be making a request using NavigateToURL() where the protocol, host and port did not exactly
match and will likely be leveraging UNC paths, file:/// or other Windows-specific schemes in the destina-
tion. For increased security, we recommend administrators leave this feature disabled.

User interface option

The setting in this category determines whether SWF files playing in a browser can be displayed in
full-screen mode.

FullScreenDisable
FullScreenDisable = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
Availability: Flash Player 9.0.28.0 and higher
This setting controls whether a SWF file playing via a browser plug-in can be displayed in full-screen
mode; that is, taking up the entire screen and thus obscuring all application windows and system
controls. If you set this value to 1, SWF files that attempt to play in full-screen mode fail silently. The
default value is 0.
Full-screen mode is implemented with a number of security options already built in, so you might choose
to disable it only in specific circumstances.

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Data loading and storage options

Settings in this category let you do the following:
• prevent local SWF files from reading local files
• prevent uploading and downloading of files between remote servers and local file systems
• limit (optionally to zero) the amount of local storage web sites can use for persistent shared objects
• limit (optionally to zero) the size of the asset cache (also called the cross-domain cache)
• prevent third-party SWF files from reading and writing locally persistent shared objects
NOTE: Disabling features may cause certain web sites and applications to work incorrectly. If these
features are needed for applications running in your environment, do not disable them.

LocalFileReadDisable
LocalFileReadDisable = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
Setting this option to 1 prevents local SWF files from having read access to files on local hard drives; that
is, local SWF files can’t even run. In addition, remote SWF files are unable to upload or download files.
The default value is 0.
If this value is set to 1, ActionScript cannot read any files referenced by a path (including the first SWF file
that Flash Player opens) on the user’s hard disk. Any ActionScript API that loads files from the local file
system is blocked. File upload/download via methods of the FileReference and FileReferenceList Action-
Script APIs are also blocked if this flag is set. In addition, any values set for FileDownloadDisable and File-
UploadDisable are ignored.
It is important to remember that, except for uploading and downloading files, the only SWF files that can
read local files are SWF files that are themselves local. Therefore, you do not need to use this option to
prevent remote SWFs from reading local data; that is always prevented anyway.
If read access to the local filesystem is disabled, the ActionScript methods
FileReference.browse() and FileReferenceList.browse() are also disabled.
NOTE: In ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0, an author can use the
System.capabilities.localFileReadDisable API to query the value of this setting. The
corresponding ActionScript 3.0 API is Capabilities.localFileReadDisable.

EnableInsecureLocalWithFileSystem
EnableInsecureLocalWithFileSystem = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
Beginning with Flash Player 23, local-with-network permissions will now be applied to all local SWF
content, regardless of the preference chosen at compile time.
Background
When playing Adobe Flash (SWF) content from the local filesystem, developers have historically been
able to configure content to exclusively read from the filesystem,or communicate to the network. When
this functionality was introduced over a decade ago, it enabled an interesting array of use-cases ranging
from simple games to interactive kiosks. In the context of modern web security, we believe that
filesystem functionality in the browser plugin should be retired. At the same time, Adobe AIR has been

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established as a robust, mature solution for delivering ActionScript-based content as a standalone appli-
cation.
The vast majority of Flash Player users and content will be unaffected by this change. This change only
impacts Flash content played from the local filesystem, using the browser. Flash content hosted on the
Internet and local web servers, as well as the Standalone Flash Player remain unaffected. Users who
require this functionality can add local content to the list of Trusted Locations in Flash Player.
Workarounds for Legacy Content
We highly recommend that administrators only circumvent these controls to enable content from
trusted sources.
For Individuals:
1) On the affected system, go to the Flash Player Settings Manager:
– Mac: System Preferences > Flash Player
– Windows: Control Panel > Flash Player
2) Select the Advanced tab.
3) In the Developer Tools section, click the Trusted Location Settings button.
4) Click the "Add..." button and add relevant files and folders to the list.
For Google Chrome (and other PPAPI browsers):
1) Navigate to the Settings Manager page.
2) Choose Edit Locations > Add Locations from the popup list.
3) In the text field that appears, type or paste the file/folder path that you'd like to trust.
4) Click the "Confirm" button.
NOTE: Please be aware that the "Browse for files" and "Browse for folder" buttons do not function prop-
erly. You must manually type or copy/paste your path into the text field above the buttons to add the file
or folder to the trusted list.
For System Administrators:
The legacy behavior can be restored by applying the EnableInsecureLocalWithFileSystem=1 flag to
mms.cfg.

FileDownloadDisable
FileDownloadDisable = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
If this value is set to 1, the ActionScript FileReference.download() method is disabled; the user is
not prompted to allow a download, and no downloads using the FileReference API are allowed. If this
value is set to 0 (the default), Flash Player allows the ActionScript FileReference.download()
method to ask the user where a file can be downloaded to, and then Flash Player downloads the file after
the user approves the file save location. Files are never downloaded without user approval.

FileDownloadEnabledDomain
FileDownloadEnabledDomain = domain name or IP address

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If the FileDownloadDisable value is set to 1, it prevents SWF files from downloading files using the
FileReference API. The FileDownloadEnabledDomain settings provide exceptions to that rule. They
create a list of allowed domain names or IP addresses from which files can be downloaded. If the active
security context is in the list of domains and IP addresses then file downloads will be allowed. Otherwise
it will default to the behavior specified by the FileDownloadDisable setting.
This value must be set to a string containing a full domain name or IP address. The string value must
exactly match the domain name or IP address to be enabled. Strings with wildcards such as *.adobe.com
or 10.1.1.* are not supported. The mms.cfg file can contain multiple FileDownloadEnabledDomain
settings to allow downloading from multiple domains and IP addresses.
For example, the following settings only allow files to downloaded from servers at test.mydomain.com
and 10.1.1.10:
FileDownloadDisable=1
FileDownloadEnabledDomain=test.mydomain.com
FileDownloadEnabledDomain=10.1.1.10

FileUploadDisable
FileUploadDisable = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
If this value is set to 1, all FileReference.upload(), FileReference.browse(), and
FileReferenceList.browse() activity is disabled; the user is not prompted to upload files, and no
uploads using the FileReference API are allowed. If this value is set to 0 (the default), Flash Player allows
files to be uploaded using the FileReference API. The user is prompted to select a file to upload and to
approve the selection. Files are never uploaded without user approval.

FileUploadEnabledDomain
FileUploadEnabledDomain = domain name or IP address
If the FileUploadDisable value is set to 1, it prevents SWF files from uploading files using the
FileReference API. The FileUploadEnabledDomain settings provide exceptions to that rule. They
create a list of allowed domain names or IP addresses to which files can be uploaded. If the active security
context is in the list of domains and IP addresses, then file uploads will be allowed. Otherwise, Adobe
Flash Player will follow the behavior specified by the FileUploadDisable setting.
This value must be set to a string containing a full domain name or IP address. The string value must
exactly match the domain name or IP address to be enabled. Strings with wildcards such as *.adobe.com
or 10.1.1.* are not supported. The mms.cfg file can contain multiple FileDownloadEnabledDomain
settings to allow uploading to multiple domains and IP addresses.
For example, the following settings only allow files to be uploaded to servers at test.mydomain.com and
10.1.1.10:
FileDownloadDisable=1
FileDownloadEnabledDomain=test.mydomain.com
FileDownloadEnabledDomain=10.1.1.10

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LocalStorageLimit
LocalStorageLimit = [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ] (1 = no storage, 2 = 10 KB, 3 =
100 KB, 4 = 1 MB, 5 = 10 MB, 6 = user specifies upper limit)
This value specifies a hard limit on the amount of local storage that Flash Player uses (per domain) for
persistent shared objects. The user can use the Settings Manager or Local Storage Settings dialog box to
specify local storage limits (see Localstorageoptions). If no value is set here and the user doesn’t specify
storage limits, the default limit is 100 KB per domain. If this value is set to 6 (the default), the user spec-
ifies the storage limits for each domain.
If LocalStorageLimit is set, the Local Storage tab shows the limit specified. and the user can use this tab
as if the limit does not exist. If the user sets more restrictive settings than the value set by LocalStorage-
Limit, they are honored (and displayed the next time the Settings dialog box is loaded). However, if the
user selects settings higher than the limit set by LocalStorageLimit, the user’s settings are ignored.
The local file storage limit is best obtained from the Settings dialog box, because this security setting is
just a maximum value, and the user may have set a lower limit.

ThirdPartyStorage
ThirdPartyStorage = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
Third party refers to SWF files that are executing within a browser and have an originating domain that
does not match the URL displayed in the browser window.
If this value is set to 1, third-party SWF files can read and write locally persistent shared objects. If this
value is set to 0, third-party SWF files cannot read or write locally persistent shared objects.
This setting does not have a default value. If it is not included in the mms.cfg file, the Settings Manager
or Local Storage Settings dialog box lets the user specify whether to permit locally persistent shared
objects. If the user doesn’t make any changes, the default is to permit shared objects.

AssetCacheSize
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 9.0.115.0
AssetCacheSize = [ 0, number of megabytes ]
This value specifies a hard limit, in MB, on the amount of local storage that Adobe Flash Player uses for
the storage of common Adobe Flash components. If this option is not included in the mms.cfg file, the
Settings Manager lets the user specify whether to permit component storage. However, the user can’t
specify how much local storage space to use. The default limit is 20 MB.
Setting this value to 0 disables component storage, and any components that have already been down-
loaded are purged the next time Flash Player runs.

Update options
Adobe Flash Player supports software updates by periodically checking for new versions of the player on
Adobe.com. Settings in this category configure the auto-update mechanism used by Flash Player. Admin-
istrators can increase or decrease the frequency of checks for newer versions, enable background
updates, or disable auto-update entirely.

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Windows and macOS platforms support an automatic update method called a notification update. A
notification update is an anonymous check that is only performed when the player is loaded to view
Adobe Flash content, typically in the browser. By default, an update check only occurs if it has been at
least seven days since Adobe Flash Player last checked for updates. Flash Player never runs in the back-
ground to perform the notification update check.
In a notification update, a dialog box announces the availability of the update to the user to let the user
either accept, postpone, or reject the update. If the user accepts the update, the new installer is down-
loaded and run.
On Microsoft Windows and macOS, Adobe Flash Player supports a background update that installs the
update silently in the background, without any user interaction. A background update installs both the
ActiveX and plug-in players when appropriate.
Update settings can be configured by users with admin rights. Admin users can set the frequency of the
checks, disable notification updates, or disable background updates by using the Adobe Flash Player
Settings Manager. For more information, see Update options.
If you want to enforce standardized update settings for all users, you can use the mms.cfg options
discussed in this section. Also, ensure that those users who should not be allowed to change these
settings are configured as standard users and do not have admin rights.

AutoUpdateDisable
AutoUpdateDisable = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
If this value is set to 0 (the default), Adobe Flash Player lets a user with admin rights enable or disable all
updates for all accounts on the machine in the Settings Manager.
If this value is set to 1, Flash Player disables all updates.
NOTE: If this value is set to 1, the AutoUpdateInterval, DisableProductDownload,
ProductDisabled, and SilentAutoUpdateEnable options in this section are ignored, disabling
all non-manual updates on the system.

AutoUpdateInterval
AutoUpdateInterval = [ number of days]
If this is a negative value (the default), Flash Player uses the notification update interval value specified
in the Settings Manager. (If users don't make any changes with the Settings Manager, the default is every
7 days.) If this value is set to 0, Flash Player checks for an update every time it starts. If this is a positive
value, the value specifies the minimum number of days between update checks.
This applies to Windows ActiveX and NPAPI plug-in, and Mac NPAPI and PPAPI plug-ins. Windows PPAPI
uses a Task Scheduler item to check for an update and does not utilize this setting in the mms.cfg file.
This setting modifies the notification update check frequency used to announce an update is available
via a notification pop-up window. It is NOT used to modify the background update check frequency.
Do NOT use this setting if the intent is to use Background Updates to update the client systems.

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DisableProductDownload
DisableProductDownload = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
If this value is set to 0 (the default), Adobe Flash Player can install native code applications that are digi-
tally signed and delivered by Adobe. Adobe uses this capability to deliver Adobe Flash Player updates
through the developer-initiated Express Install process, and to deliver the Adobe Acrobat Connect
screen-sharing functionality. If this value is set to 1, these capabilities are disabled.
However, if you want to allow only specific product downloads, set this value to 0 (or omit it) and use the
ProductDisabled option to specify which product downloads are not permitted.

ProductDisabled
ProductDisabled = application name
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 10.0.2
This option is effective only when DisableProductDownload has a value of 0, or is not present in the
mms.cfg file. Use this directive to create a list of ProductManager applications that are not permitted to
install or launch. Unlike most other mms.cfg options, you can use this option as many times as is appro-
priate for your environment.

SilentAutoUpdateEnable
SilentAutoUpdateEnable = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
Adobe Flash Player 11.2 for Microsoft Windows, and Adobe Flash Player 11.3 for macOS.
Enables Adobe Flash Player updates to install silently in the background with no user interaction.
• On Windows: Installs the ActiveX control,NPAPI plugin, and PPAPI plugin where appropriate.
• On macOS: Installs NPAPI plugin and PPAPI plugin where appropriate.
This type of update is called an Adobe Flash Player background update.
Standard users cannot disable background updates if they are enabled by an administrator.
Enabling silent auto updates (background updates) does not disable notification updates and users may
still receive notifications to update Flash Player, instead of the update occurring silently in the back-
ground.
Depending on the type of browser, if the user has a browser open at the time of an update, the browser
might not use the updated player immediately. For more information, see Performing a background
update.
The default value is 0 to disable background updates.

SilentAutoUpdateServerDomain
SilentAutoUpdateServerDomain = yourDomain
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 11.2 for Microsoft Windows.

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Enables you to host and deploy Flash Player background updates from an internal server. For more infor-
mation, see Background updates from an internal server. When hosting background updates internally,
Notification Updates are disabled.

SilentAutoUpdateVerboseLogging
SilentAutoUpdateVerboseLogging = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 11.2 for Microsoft Windows, and Adobe Flash Player 11.3 for macOS.
Enables logging of warning and error codes to FlashInstall.log during a background update. The location
of the FlashInstall.log file depends on your platform. For more information, see Player files and locations.
The default value is 0 to disable logging.

Security options
These options let you modify the default Flash Player security model. For more information on the secu-
rity model, see Security considerations.

LegacyDomainMatching
LegacyDomainMatching = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
This setting controls whether to allow a SWF file produced for Flash Player 6 and earlier to execute an
operation that has been restricted in a newer version of Adobe Flash Player.
Flash Player 6 made security sandbox distinctions based on super domains. For example, SWF files from
www.example.com and store.example.com were placed in the same sandbox. Flash Player 7 and later
have made security sandbox distinctions based on exact domains. As an example, a SWF file from
www.example.com is placed in a different sandbox than a SWF file fromstore.example.com. The
exact-domain behavior is more secure, but occasionally users may encounter a set of cooperating SWF
files that were created when the older superdomain rules were in effect, and require the superdomain
rules to work correctly.
When this occurs, by default, Flash Player shows a dialog box asking users whether to allow or deny
access between the two domains. Users may configure a permanent answer to this question by selecting
Never Ask Again in the dialog, or by visiting the Settings Manager. The LegacyDomainMatching setting
lets you override users' decisions about this situation.
This setting does not have a default value. If it is not included in the mms.cfg file, the user can determine
whether to allow the operation in a global manner (using the Settings Manager), or on a case-by-case
basis (using an interactive dialog box). The values the user can choose among are “Ask,” “Allow,” and
“Deny.” The default value is “Ask”.
If this value is set to 1, Flash Player behaves as though the user answers “allow” whenever they make this
decision. If it is set to 0, Flash Player behaves as though the user answers “deny” whenever they make
this decision.

LocalFileLegacyAction
LocalFileLegacyAction = [ 0, 1 ] (0=false, 1=true)

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This setting controls how Flash Player determines whether to execute certain local SWF files that were
originally produced for Flash Player 7 and earlier.
Flash Player 7 and earlier placed all local SWF files in the local-trusted sandbox. Flash Player 8 and later
have, by default, placed local SWF files in either the local-with-filesystem or local-with-networking
sandbox. In order for a SWF file to be placed in the local-trusted sandbox in Flash Player 8 or later, that
SWF file must be designated trusted, using either the Settings Manager or a trust configuration file. This
latter behavior is more secure, but occasionally users may encounter an older local SWF file that was
created when the older local-trusted behavior was in effect, and must be in the local-trusted sandbox in
order to work correctly. Users are notified of such situations by a dialog box, but the dialog is only a
failure notification, not a means to trust the SWF file in question.
Users can restore the functionality of such SWF files on a case-by-case basis by designating them trusted
in the Settings Manager, but if users encounter a large number of such files, they may also elect in the
Settings Manager to place all local SWF files published for Flash Player 7 or earlier into the local-trusted
sandbox. The LocalFileLegacyAction setting lets you override users' decisions about this situation.
This setting does not have a default value. If it is not included in the mms.cfg file, the user can use the
Settings Manager to specify whether to place all older local SWF files into the local-trusted sandbox.
If this value is set to 1 (the most permissive setting), Flash Player behaves as though users had elected to
place all older local SWF files into the local-trusted sandbox. If this value is set to 0 (the most restrictive
setting), Flash Player behaves as though users had elected never to automatically place older local SWF
files into the local-trusted sandbox, and also suppresses the failure notification dialog.

AllowUserLocalTrust
This setting lets you prevent users from designating any files on local file systems as trusted (that is,
placing them into the local-trusted sandbox). This setting applies to SWF files published for any version
of Flash.
AllowUserLocalTrust = [ 0, 1 ] (0=false, 1=true)
If this value is set to 1 (the default), Flash Player allows the user to specify whether local files can be
placed into the local-trusted sandbox, through the use of the Settings Manager Global Security Settings
panel and user trust files. If this value is set to 0, the user cannot place files into the local-trusted sandbox.
That is, the Settings Manager Global Security Settings panel and user trust files are ignored.

EnforceLocalSecurityInActiveXHostApp
EnforceLocalSecurityInActiveXHostApp = "executable filename”
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 9 and above
By default, local security is disabled whenever the ActiveX control is running in a non-browser host appli-
cation. In rare cases when this causes a problem, you can use this setting to enforce local security rules
for the specified application. You can enforce local security for multiple applications by entering a sepa-
rate EnforceLocalSecurityInActiveXHostApp entry for each application.
The filename string must specify the executable filename only, not the full path to the executable; if you
specify a full path, the setting is ignored. You can optionally include the EXE (Windows) or APP (macOS)

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file extension. On macOS, you can specify either the name of the actual executable or the name of an
application bundle within which the executable is located.
The text encoding of mms.cfg is significant when specified filenames include non-ASCII characters; see
Character encoding.

FullScreenInteractiveDisable
FullScreenInteractiveDisable = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 11.3 and above
If this value is set to 0 (the default), applications can enable full-screen with text input mode (known as
full-screen interactive mode). To use full-screen interactive mode, an application must prompt the user
for a key press or mouse-click to enter the mode. Once in full-screen interactive mode, Flash Player
displays an overlay that indicates it is in full-screen interactive mode, and includes the domain of the
current page, and an Allow button. The overlay continuously displays until the user presses Allow.
Full-screen interactive mode is intended for use by full-screen games that require text and keyboard
input.
In past releases, this feature was available in AIR applications only.

DisableNetworkAndFilesystemInHostApp
DisableNetworkAndFilesystemInHostApp = "executable filename”
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 9 and above
This option is similar to EnforceLocalSecurityInActiveXHostApp, but applies to plug-ins as well as the
ActiveXcontrol, and imposes stricter security controls. When a plug-in or ActiveX control is running
within a specified application, it will be as though the HTML parameter allowNetworking="none"
had been specified. That is, no networking or file system access of any kind will be permitted, and the
SWF running in the Flash Player will run without the ability to load any additional media or communicate
with any servers. You can enforce local security for multiple applications by entering a separate
DisableNetworkAndFilesystemInHostApp entry for each application.
The filename string must specify the executable filename only, not the full path to the executable; if you
specify a full path, the setting is ignored. You can optionally include the EXE (Windows) or APP (macOS)
extension. On macOS, you can specify either the name of the actual executable or the name of an appli-
cation bundle within which the executable is located.
The text encoding of mms.cfg is significant when specified filenames include non-ASCII characters; see
Character encoding.

Socket connection options

These settings determine whether socket connections using the ActionScript Socket and XMLSocket
classes are permitted. Socket connections also require the presence of a socket policy file on the target
server; for more information, see Data loading through different domains.

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DisableSockets
DisableSockets = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 9.0.115.0 and above.
This option enables or disables the use of the Socket.connect() and XMLSocket.connect()
methods. If you don’t include this option in the mms.cfg file, or if its value is set to 0, socket connections
are permitted to any server. If this value is set to 1, no socket connections are allowed. However, if you
want to disable some but not all socket connections, set this value to 1 and then use EnableSocketsTo to
specify one or more servers to which socket connections can be made.

EnableInsecureActiveXMHTMLSupport
EnableInsecureActiveXMHTMLSupport = [0, 1] (0 = false, 1 = true)
This setting allows Administrators to override the Flash Player 32 and above behavior of restricting the
ability for Flash Player to launch when loaded from an MHTML (.mhtml or .mhtm) document. We recom-
mend that administrators leave this feature disabled.

EnableInsecureByteArrayShareable
EnableInsecureByteArrayShareable = [0,1] (0=false, 1=true)
In Adobe Flash Player 30 and above, this setting allows Administrators to override default restrictions the
shareable property of the ActionScript ByteArray API class. Shared ByteArrays are used to share data
between threads with ActionScript "Workers." Shared ByteArrays are an advanced feature of the Action-
Script API set and not commonly used in the vast majority of published Flash content. For increased secu-
rity, we recommend administrators leave this feature disabled.

EnableInsecureByteArrayShareableDomain
EnableInsecureByteArrayShareableDomain = domain name or IP address
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 30 and above.
This option overrides the default behavior disabling the shareable property of the ActionScriptByteArray
class. The EnableInsecureByteArrayShareableDomain settings provide exceptions to that rule. Adminis-
trators can create a list of allowed domain names or IP addresses to which the EnableInsecureByteAr-
rayShareable setting will apply. If the active security context is in the list of domains and IP addresses,
then access to the sharable ByteArray property will be allowed. Otherwise, access to the sharable Byte-
Array will be denied.
For domain names, prefixing a * wildcard is allowed. For example, *.adobe.com would allow all Flash
content with the "shareable" property to run on www.adobe.com, get.adobe.com, helpx.adobe.com,
and so on. Wildcards are not allowed when specifying IP addresses.
For example, the following settings only allow SWFs using the shareable ByteArray property to servers at
test.mydomain.com and 10.1.1.10:
EnableInsecureByteArrayShareableDomain=test.mydomain.com
EnableInsecureByteArrayShareableDomain=10.1.1.10

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EnableSocketsTo
EnableSocketsTo = [ host name, IP address ]
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 9.0.115.0.
This option is effective only when DisableSockets has a value of 1; it creates a whitelist of servers to
which socket connections are allowed. Unlike most other mms.cfg options, you can use this option as
many times as is appropriate for your environment. Note that the servers specified are target servers, to
which socket connections are made; they are not origin servers, from which the connecting SWF files are
served.
The values specified here must exactly match the values specified in the ActionScript connect()
methods. If you specify an IP address here, but the connect() method specifies a host name, the
method fails even if that host name resolves to the specified IP address. Similarly, if you specify a host
name here but the connect() method specifies an IP address, the method fails.
Using this option does not take the place of a socket policy file on the target server. That is, this option
has no effect if the specified server does not have a socket policy file.

GPU Compositing
Flash Player rendering can use the graphics processor unit (GPU) on the video card to accelerate image
compositing. In certain circumstances, Flash Player disables GPU compositing. The option in this section
lets you override this action and enable GPU compositing.

OverrideGPUValidation
OverrideGPUValidation= [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 10.0.2.
The GPU compositing feature is gated by the driver version for video cards. If a card and driver combina-
tion does not match the requirements needed to implement compositing, set OverrideGPUValidation to
1 to override validation of the driver requirements. For example, you might want GPU compositing
enabled during a specific test suite, even if the video driver in the test machine doesn’t meet compositing
requirements. This setting overrides driver version gating but still checks for VRAM requirements.
Adobe recommends that you use this setting with care. Overriding GPU validation can result in rendering
problems or system crashes due to driver issues. After completing the tests or programming tasks that
require the use of this setting, consider setting it back to 0 (or removing it from the mms.cfg file) for
normal operations.

RTMFP options
The mms.cfg options described in this section let you specify settings related to peer-to-peer (P2P)
connections and the Real Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP).

RTMFPP2PDisable
RTMFPP2PDisable= [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)

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Availability: Adobe Flash Player 10.0.2 and higher.

This option specifies how the NetStream constructor connects to a server when a value is specified for
peerID, the second parameter passed to the constructor. If RTMFPP2PDisable has a value of 0 or is not
present in the mms.cfg file, a peer-to-peer (P2P) connection can be used. If this value is 1, any value spec-
ified for peerID is ignored and P2P connections are disabled; NetStream objects can connect only to Flash
Media Server.

RTMFPTURNProxy
RTMFPTURNProxy = URL of TURN proxy server
Availability: Flash Player 10.0.2
If this option is present, Flash Player attempts to make RTMFP connections through the specified TURN
server in addition to normal UDP sockets. TURN Servers are useful for conveying RTMFP network traffic
through firewalls that otherwise block UDP packets.

Protected mode options

Adobe Flash Player Protected mode is a security enhancement designed to limit the impact of attacks
launched from malicious SWF files against Flash Player. In the Protected mode, SWFs are rendered using
a sandboxed Flash Player runtime.
NOTE: Protected mode is available with Adobe Flash Player in 32-bit Mozilla Firefox 4.0 or later on
Windows Vista and higher.
On Windows Vista and Windows 7, the Protected mode is enabled by default. However, you can disable
it using the appropriate option in the mms.cfg.

ProtectedMode
ProtectedMode = [0, 1] (0 = off, 1 = on)
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 11.3 and higher.
This option specifies whether the protected mode is enabled. If enabled, on Windows Vista and higher,
SWFs are rendered in 32-bit Mozilla Firefox 4.0 or higher using a sandboxed Adobe Flash Player runtime.

ProtectedModeBrokerAllowListConfigFile
ProtectedModeBrokerAllowListConfigFile = [0, 1] (0 = false, 1 = true)
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 11.3 and higher.
Protected mode prevents a number of actions that can be bypassed by creating a list of allowed actions
(policies). The component that performs the actions based on the policies is called a “broker.” If a prop-
erly configured policy file is provided, the broker can bypass the application’s default restrictions.
If this option is set to true, provide a policy file.
Ensure the following if you want to provide a policy file:
• Name the policy file as ProtectedModeBrokerAllowlistConfig.txt.

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• Provide policy file in the Flash directory:

– 32-bit Windows - %WINDIR%\System32\Macromed\Flash
– 64-bit Windows - %WINDIR%\SysWow64\Macromed\Flash

ProtectedModeBrokerLogfilePath
ProtectedModeBrokerLogfilePath = path to the log file
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 11.3 and higher.
Specifies the path to the log file to record the policy file violations. If a path is not provided, no file is
created. This option is applicable only if ProtectedModeBrokerAllowlistConfigFile is set
to true.

Hardware Options
The options in this category let you select appropriate settings for your computer hardware.

DisableHardwareAcceleration
DisableHardwareAcceleration = [0, 1] (0 = false, 1 = true)
If this option is set to 1, hardware acceleration is disabled. You can use this option if you suspect that
hardware acceleration is causing your system to become unstable.

Audio Options
The options in this category let you select audio settings for your computer.

UseWAVPlayer
UseWAVPlayer = [0, 1] (0 = false, 1 = true)
If this option is set to 1, Flash Player will use WAV Audio for playback instead of the Windows Core Audio
APIs. Use this option if you face audio playback problems in Adobe Flash Player on Windows 7 or higher.

NetworkRequestTimeout
NetworkRequestTimeout = [1-30] (configurable from 1 to 30 seconds, default
= 5)
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 14 and higher.
If you encounter delays loading web content due to slow or blocked network access, reducing this
number allows Flash Player to shorten the time it waits for a network response and possibly improve
page responsiveness.
If the Flash content requires additional time before the server responds, increasing this value will extend
the period before Flash Player gives up on the network request.

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EnableInsecureJunctionBehavior
EnableInsecureJunctionBehavior = [0,1] (0=true, 1=false)
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 14 and higher.
This directive overrides the default restriction on write access to paths that traverse junction files in
Windows filesystems. This directive only applies to Internet Explorer with Protected Mode disabled.
We recommend that Administrators use this flag as a short term workaround and instead focus on a solu-
tion where the user’s appdata folder remains in the local user profile folder.

EnableLocalAppData
EnableLocalAppData= [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true )
If this value is set to 1, the location where Adobe Flash Player stores Local Shared Objects will be changed
from %APPDATA% to %LOCALAPPDATA%. For environments where the %APPDATA% folders on end-user
machines are stored on a network volume, enabling this option causes Adobe Flash Player to write user
data to the local system, minimizing possible security and performance impacts.

DefaultLanguage
DefaultLanguage = language name from chart below
This property allows the user or admin to override Flash Player's default language by specifying one of
the languages in the table below.

Language Value Win Mac PPAPI

Arabic ar Y Y N
Bulgarian bg Y Y N
Czech cs Y Y Y
Danish da Y Y N
German de Y Y Y
Greek el Y Y N
English en Y Y Y
English - United en_gb Y Y N
Kingdom
Spanish es Y Y Y
Estonian et Y Y N
Finnish fi Y Y N
French fr Y Y Y
Hebrew he Y Y N

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Language Value Win Mac PPAPI

Croatian hr Y Y N
Hungarian hu Y Y N
Italian it Y Y Y
Japanese ja Y Y Y
Korean ko Y Y Y
Azeri lt Y Y N
Latvian lv Y Y N
Norwegian nb Y Y N
Dutch nl Y Y Y
Polish pl Y Y Y
Portuguese pt Y Y Y
Portuguese - pt_pt Y Y N
Portugal
Romanian ro Y Y N
Russian ru Y Y Y
Slovak sk Y Y N
Slovenian sl Y Y N
Serbian sr Y Y N
Swedish sv Y Y Y
Thai th Y Y N
Turkish tr Y Y Y
Ukrainian uk Y Y N
Chinese - China zh-CN Y Y Y
Chinese - Taiwan zh-TW Y Y Y

IEClickToPlayBlocked
IEClickToPlayBlocked = domain name or IP address

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This option only applies when EnableIEClickToPlay is enabled. This directive creates a list of servers on
which all hosted Flash content will be blocked. If a domain or IP is included in the block list, the user will
not be presented with a play button and the content will not render. This directive can be specified
multiple times, with one domain or IP per entry.
For domain names, prefixing a * wild card is allowed. For example, *.adobe.com would allow block all
Flash content hosted on www.adobe.com, get.adobe.com, helpx.adobe.com, etc. Wild cards are not
allowed when specifying IP addresses.
IEClickToPlayBypass and IEClickToPlayBlocked directives can be used in conjunction with each other. For
example, enterprises wishing to minimize Flash usage to only their company sub-domains can add the
following to their user's MMS.CFG:
EnableIEClickToPlay = 1
IEClickToPlayBlocked = *
IEClickToPlayBypass = *.myenterprise.com
These two entries would disable all Flash playback except for that on any sub-domain of myenter-
prise.com, which would run without any user intervention.

EnableIEClickToPlay
EnableIEClickToPlay = [ 0, 1 ] (0 = false, 1 = true)
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 27.0.0.130 and higher.
With Microsoft Internet Explorer on Windows 7 and below, administrators can change the default play-
back behavior to always prompt the user before playing SWF content.
Once enabled, visible Adobe Flash content within the page will be displayed with a “Play” button. When
this play button is clicked, content playback will start immediately.
Please note that due to different methods used by content developers to instantiate Flash, clicking the
play button may occasionally fail. If this occurs, we recommend that administrators use the IEClickTo-
PlayBypass directive to add approved domains or URLs to a list of content allowed to automatically play
on load. See IEClickToPlayBypass for more details.

IEClickToPlayBypass
IEClickToPlayBypass = domain name or IP address
This option is only applicable when EnableIEClickToPlay is enabled. This directive allows administrators
to specify a list of servers on which all hosted Adobe Flash content will play back immediately, without
user interaction. This directive can be specified multiple times, with one IP or domain per entry.
For domain names, prefixing a * wild card is allowed. For example, *.adobe.com would allow all Flash
content to run on www.adobe.com, get.adobe.com, helpx.adobe.com, and so on. Wild cards are not
allowed when specifying IP addresses.
IEClickToPlayBypass and IEClickToPlayBlocked directives can be used in conjunction with each other. For
example, enterprises wishing to minimize Flash usage to only internal subdomains may add the following
to their user's MMS.CFG:

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CHAPTER 5 ADMINISTRATION

EnableIEClickToPlay = 1
IEClickToPlayBlocked = *
IEClickToPlayBypass = *.myenterprise.com
These two entries would disable all Flash playback except for that on any sub-domain of myenter-
prise.com, which would run without any user intervention.

EventJitterMicroseconds
EventJitterMicroseconds = 0
(0 = disabled; entry not present = enabled)
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 30.0.0.113 and higher.
Setting this value to 0 disables an important mitigation for Spectre and Meltdown (CVE-2017-5753,
CVE-2017-5715, CVE-2017-5754) style attacks, but may improve application performance in some
limited circumstances. To enable the setting, delete the entry from the mms.cfg file.

TimerJitterMicroseconds
TimerJitterMicroseconds = 0
(0 = disabled; entry not present = enabled)
Availability: Adobe Flash Player 30.0.0.113 and higher.
Setting this value to 0 disables an important mitigation for Spectre and Meltdown (CVE-2017-5753,
CVE-2017-5715, CVE-2017-5754) style attacks, but may improve application performance in some
limited circumstances. To enable the setting, delete the entry from the mms.cfg file.

InsecureJitterDisabledDomain
InsecureJitterDisabledDomain = domain name or IP address
Adding domains to this whitelist disables important mitigations for Spectre and Meltdown
(CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5715, CVE-2017-5754) style attacks, but may improve application perfor-
mance in some limited circumstances. This directive can be specified multiple times, with one IP or
domain per entry. To re-enable the setting, delete the entries from the mms.cfg file.
For domain names, prefixing a * wildcard is allowed. For example, *.adobe.com would disable jitter miti-
gations on www.adobe.com, get.adobe.com, and helpx.adobe.com, and so on. Wildcards are not
allowed when specifying IP addresses.
For example, the following settings would disable timer and event jitter at test.mydomain.com and
10.1.1.10:
InsecureJitterDisabledDomain=test.mydomain.comInsecureJitterDisabledDoma
in=10.1.1.10

The Global FlashPlayerTrust directory

Application installers can specify that certain files or directories of files that are stored on the user’s
computer should be trusted for all users, and be placed in a local-trusted sandbox. (For a discussion of

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CHAPTER 5 ADMINISTRATION

sandboxes, see Security sandboxes for local content.) If you are deploying applications with content that
should be trusted for all users on a computer, you can place trust information for that application in a
directory that you specify as a trusted directory. Because information in this directory applies to all users,
the directory requires administrative access.
This directory is named FlashPlayerTrust, and is called the Global FlashPlayerTrust directory. It is located
alongside the directory that contains the mms.cfg file (see mms.cfg file location). For example, if the
mms.cfg file is in C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash, the location of the Global FlashPlayerTrust
directory is C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\FlashPlayerTrust. (For information on specifying content
as trusted only for the current user, see The User FlashPlayerTrust directory.)
The Global FlashPlayerTrust directory can contain any number of trust configuration files. At startup,
Flash Player reads all files in this directory. The names of these files are unimportant; you can choose any
filenames you want for your trust configuration files. Generally, each file contains information on a single
application, but you can put information on several applications in a single file if you prefer. The config-
uration file is a text file; each line contains the name of a file or directory, to be trusted. If you specify a
directory, all files at or below that directory level are trusted.
Create a configuration file to trust a file or directory
1) Create a new file in the Global FlashPlayerTrust directory using a text editor, and save it with a
unique name.
Choose a name for your trust configuration file that is unlikely to collide with the names of any other
trust configuration files that might be installed. One good way to do this is to name the file after the
particular product you are trusting. For example, if you are trusting an employee vacation applica‐
tion, you might call the trust configuration file EmployeeVacation.cfg.
2) Type or paste each directory path (any directory path on the user’s hard disk) or file name on a new
line in the file. You can paste multiple directory paths on separate lines. When you finish, your file
might look similar to the following:
# Trust all files in the Employee online calendar app
C:\Program Files\Personnel\Employees\OnlineCalendar
# Trust the file that checks remaining vacation days for an employee
C:\Program Files\Personnel\Employees\VacationDaysRemaining.swf
In this example, the SWF file is not in the same directory as the online calendar app, so it must be
trusted separately.
3) Save your changes.
4) To test whether the files have been trusted correctly, you can do one of the following:
– Run the SWF file named in the configuration file.
– Create a SWF file in the trusted directory that displays the value returned by the ActionScript
API System.security.sandboxType (ActionScript 1.0 or 2.0) or
Security.sandboxType (ActionScript 3.0). Run the SWF file in a browser, not through the
use of the Test Movie command in Flash. (When SWF files run via Test Movie, local security is
not implemented.) The value should be "localTrusted".

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 ACCESSING USER SETTINGS
CHAPTER 6 USER-CONFIGURED SETTINGS

User-configured settings
End users can set a variety of options for managing privacy and security settings when running Adobe
Flash Player on their computers.

Accessing user settings

Adobe Flash Player lets users make a number of decisions regarding privacy, local storage, and so on.
These settings are available to the user in three primary ways:
• Pop-up dialogs that appear when Adobe Flash Player tries to perform an activity that requires user
consent, such as accessing a camera or saving data to disk.
• A tabbed set of dialogs that the user can display by right-clicking (command-clicking on macOS) and
choosing Settings from the context menu.
• The Flash Player Settings Manager, which the user can display by right-clicking (command-clicking
on macOS) and choosing Global Settings from the context menu.
Users can also display the Flash Player Settings Manager from the native settings utility:
• macOS: System Preferences > Flash Player
• Windows:
– XP: Control Panel > Flash Player
– Vista: Control Panel > Classic View > Flash Player
– Windows 7 and above: Control Panel\All Control Panel Items > Flash Player
• Linux: Although this varies slightly between distributions, it is usually Settings > Preferences > Flash
Player.
In many cases, you can use the mms.cfg file to override user-specified settings and implement more strin-
gent or more accessible settings. For more information, see Administration.
NOTE: If you use the mms.cfg file to override user settings, the mms.cfg settings are unavailable or
disabled to the end user. For example, when AutoUpdate is disabled via mms.cfg (AutoUpdateDis-
able=1), the Check for Updates section in the Settings Manager is disabled. If you think this might be
confusing for your users, you might want to let them know that certain settings are unavailable to them.
Much of the information in this section is excerpted from the help page for Adobe Flash Player Settings
(www.adobe.com/go/player_help_en). The documentation is geared towards end users and may help
further clarify the available options.
NOTE: In the following sections, screen shots are provided to illustrate the pop-up dialog boxes and the
tabbed Settings Panels. For Settings Manager pages, links are provided instead of screen shots, so you
can navigate to that page and see the actual Settings Manager online.

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CHAPTER 6 USER-CONFIGURED SETTINGS

Privacy options
Privacy options let the user specify whether an application can have access to the camera or microphone.
Users specify these options in one of several ways, summarized below. Administrators can use the
AVHardwareDisable option in the mms.cfg file to override user privacy settings.
• The first time a site tries to access the camera or microphone, a pop-up dialog appears. This dialog
lets the user specify a one-time preference to allow or deny access.
• The Privacy tab lets the user allow or deny access to the camera and microphone for all applications
from the current website without asking for permission each time.
• The Website Privacy Settings Panel at www.adobe.com/go/website_privacy_settings lets the user
specify settings for any of the web sites that have already requested permission to use the camera
or microphone.
• The Global Privacy Settings Panel at www.adobe.com/go/global_privacy_settings lets the user
reset privacy options for all web sites.

Local storage options

Local storage options let the user specify whether an application can place a shared object on their
computer, and the maximum size that object can attain. Applications use shared objects to store data
such as user names, game scores, shopping preferences, and so on. Users specify these options in one of
several ways, summarized below. You can use a number of options in the mms.cfg file to override user
local storage settings; see Data loading and storage options.
• The first time a site tries to store information on the user’s computer, a pop-up dialog appears. This
dialog lets the user specify a one-time preference to allow or deny access.
• The Local Storage tab lets the user allow or deny access for local storage for all applications from
the current website without asking for permission each time.
• The Website Storage Settings Panel at www.adobe.com/go/website_storage_settings lets the user
specify storage settings for any of the web sites that have already requested permission to store
data locally.
• The Global Storage Settings Panel at www.adobe.com/go/global_storage_settings lets the user
specify storage settings for any web sites that have not yet requested permission to store data
locally. This panel also lets the user choose whether to store data for a third-party local shared
objects (objects being stored by a website whose originating domain does not match the URL
displayed in the browser window) and whether to store common Flash components to reduce
download times.

Update options
Update options let the user specify whether Adobe Flash Player should display a notification when a new
version is available, and how frequently to check for new versions. When installing the player on
Windows and macOS, the user selects which option they want:

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CHAPTER 6 USER-CONFIGURED SETTINGS

• Allow Adobe to install updates (recommended)

• Notify me to install updates
• Never check for updates (not recommended)
For Linux systems, users are automatically configured for notification updates. Use the Settings Manager
or the mms.cfg file to change this setting.
You can use the AutoUpdateDisable and AutoUpdateInterval settings in the mms.cfg file to prevent the
user from choosing auto-update, or to override the frequency of checking for new versions.
Note that any user can disable a notification update. However, background updates cannot be disabled.
For more information on background updates, see the SilentAutoUpdateEnable option in Update
options.
Use the Local Settings Manager to specify auto-update settings. On Microsoft Windows, access the Local
Settings Manager from the Control Panel. On macOS, access it through the System Preferences. For
Linux, access it by right-clicking on Flash content and selecting Global Settings from the context menu.
For more information on the Local Settings Manager, see http://www.adobe.com/go/global_privacy_-
settings.

Security options
This section describes the security options available to end-users. For more information on Adobe Flash
Player security in general, see Security considerations You can use a number of options in the mms.cfg
file to override user security options; see Security options.
End users should rarely need to intervene in Adobe Flash Player security decisions. However, because the
Flash security model evolves over time, occasionally Adobe Flash Player encounters a situation in which
SWF content attempts to perform an operation that was permitted in a previous version of Adobe Flash
Player, but is no longer permitted by default. In these situations, it is impossible for Flash Player to tell
whether the Flash content in question is legitimate older content that was authored before the change
in rules, or malicious content that is attempting to break the newer rules. Flash Player handles these situ-
ations conservatively, guiding users toward secure choices, but offering users the ability to restore func-
tionality of older content that has been inadvertently affected.
When Flash content attempts to use older domain matching rules, Flash Player presents a Security dialog
box:

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 DISPLAY OPTIONS
CHAPTER 6 USER-CONFIGURED SETTINGS

Users may interactively allow or prevent the attempted operation. If they choose “Never ask again”, their
allow or deny choice is remembered and used for all future instances where this dialog would be
presented. Users can later see or change their remembered choice in the Settings Manager at
www.adobe.com/go/global_security_settings. Their remembered choice is shown there as “Always
ask”, “Always allow”, or “Always deny”.
When Flash content attempts to use older local security rules, Flash Player presents a different dialog
box:

This dialog box is only a failure notification - it does not provide an interactive allow option. However, the
Settings button in this dialog box brings users to the same Settings Manager link given above. In the
Settings Manager, users can affect local security rules in two ways:
• The “Always ask”, “Always allow”, or “Always deny” choice affects not only domain matching, as
previously mentioned; it also governs Flash Player's behavior when content attempts to use older
local security rules. However, the Ask/Allow/Deny choice affects only content that is apparently
older; that is, content that specifies an older version number.
• Users can add local file system paths that are to be placed in the local-trusted sandbox (see Security
sandboxes for local content). This enables more fine-grained control than the Ask/Allow/Deny
choice, and works for SWF content of any version. Only local paths are applicable. Domain names
and URLs have no effect, as remote content may never be placed in a local sandbox. Unlike the
Ask/Allow/Deny choice, this list affects only local security rules, not domain matching rules.
Flash Player administrators can use several options in the mms.cfg configuration file to restrict users'
ability to make these security choices.
• The LegacyDomainMatching and LocalFileLegacyAction options control Flash Player's behavior in
the situations where domain matching or local security dialogs would be displayed. There is only a
single user control (Ask/Allow/Deny) for both of these situations, but you can specify different
options for each of them using the two mms.cfg options.
• The AllowUserLocalTrust option controls users' ability to add individual paths to the local-trusted
sandbox.
For more information on these options, see Security options in Administration.

Display options
Display options let the user specify whether to enable hardware acceleration.

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CHAPTER 6 USER-CONFIGURED SETTINGS

The User FlashPlayerTrust directory

Application installers and end-users can specify that certain files or directories of files that are stored on
the user’s computer should be trusted, and be placed in the user’s local-trusted sandbox. For a discussion
of sandboxes, see Security sandboxes for local content. Information on these trusted files is stored in a
directory called the User FlashPlayerTrust directory. This directory registers files or directories as trusted
for only the current user. For information on registering files as trusted for all users, see The Global Flash‐
PlayerTrust directory. You can specify whether users can permit applications to be trusted; see Security
options.
Information about trusted files can be placed in this directory in two ways:
• An administrator or end-user can create a config file and store it in the User FlashPlayerTrust direc-
tory.
• A user without administrative rights can install an application that registers itself as locally trusted.
The User FlashPlayerTrust directory is located in the following location:

Windows Vista
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\#Security\FlashPlayerTrust

Windows 2000 and Windows XP

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\#Secu-
rity\FlashPlayerTrust

macOS
/Users/username/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/#Security/FlashPlayerTrust

Linux
GNU-Linux ~/.macromedia/#Security/FlashPlayerTrust

For information on how to create and format these configuration files, see The Global FlashPlayerTrust
directory.

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 SECURITY OVERVIEW
CHAPTER 7 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS

Security considerations
It is critical to maintain the security and integrity of your users’ computers when you install Adobe Flash
Player. This section provides an overview of security, focusing on those aspects of particular interest to
administrators deploying Adobe Flash Player. Adobe has developed a number of web pages, white
papers, chapters in other books, and tech notes that address these security issues, as well as others, in
more detail. For a list of these resources, see Additional security resources.

Security overview
As a computer system administrator, one of your primary responsibilities is to ensure the security and
integrity of the data on the systems you manage. Adobe addresses Flash Player security in a number of
ways, ranging from settings users can control individually to files that must be placed on servers to allow
advanced applications to pass information between different domains.
Newer versions of Adobe Flash Player sometimes include improvements to the security model of Adobe
Flash Player and ActionScript that impact backward compatibility. In some instances, changes content
developers to update their applications, and/or system administrators to specifically allow legacy behav-
iors as a workaround until content can be improved. See About compatibility with previous Flash Player
security models for details.
A number of security-related settings can be controlled through the use of a config file (mms.cfg), which
can be applied to a user’s system when the player is deployed by an administrator.
Depending on how security settings are permitted or prohibited by the application author, the end user,
or you (the administrator), Flash Player may or may not be able to download files to the local disk, upload
files from the disk, write shared objects to disk (sometimes referred to as “Flash cookies”), access and
run other SWF files on the local disk, or communicate between the local disk and the Internet.
In addition, there are certain activities that Adobe Flash Player can never perform. As an example, SWF
content running in Adobe Flash Player cannot determine or set the default location of a native File Picker
dialog when attempting to upload or download a file from the user’s filesystem. The default location
shown in the native File Picker dialog is either the most recently browsed folder or the user’s desktop,
depending on the permissions in the environment. The running SWF content cannot read from or write
to the transferred file. In fact, the SWF content that initiated the file transfer cannot access the trans-
ferred file or the file's location on the user’s disk. Similarly, running SWF content can never determine
the contents of a local directory.
With regard to ensuring security of users’ computers, the areas of primary interest to administrators are
the following:
• How Flash uses security sandboxes to determine whether and how a SWF file on the local disk can
communicate with SWF files on the network (see Security sandboxes for local content)
• How users can interactively allow or prohibit certain potentially malicious activities (see
User‐configured settings)

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CHAPTER 7 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS

• How you can deploy a configuration file to override choices users might make with regards to secu-
rity and privacy issues (see Administration)
The topic of cross-domain security may also be of interest to administrators. Some SWF content may
require administrators to permit cross-domain requests by placing a cross-domain policy on the web
server hosting the target content. An understanding of cross-domain mechanisms will help the admin-
istrator to craft policies that minimize the scope of granted permissions and associated attack surface.
For more information, see Data loading through different domains.
NOTE: Users who are working in Adobe Animate to create applications have access to a number of ways
to implement certain security features. These techniques are described in the Adobe Animate documen-
tation. If developers in your organization are building SWF content, ensure that security measures that
you implement are compatible with the features of the applications they are developing, and vice versa.

Security sandboxes for local content

Client computers can obtain individual SWF files from a number of sources, such as by downloading them
from external web sites or by copying them from a network server. Flash Player individually assigns local
SWF files (those stored on the end-user’s computer) and other resources, such as shared objects,
bitmaps, sounds, videos, and data files, to security sandboxes based on their origin when they are loaded
by Adobe Flash Player.
Interaction between SWF content running in different sandboxes is limited; these limitations prevent
SWF files from performing operations that could introduce security breaches. Restricting how a file can
interact with the local file system and the network helps keep users’ computers and files safe. By default,
local SWF files can communicate within the local file system or with the Internet, but not both.
NOTE: Restrictions discussed in this section do not affect SWF files that are served from a web site on the
Internet.
Local SWF files can have the following levels of permission:

Access the local file system only (default)

A local SWF file can read from the local file system and universal naming convention (UNC) network
paths but cannot communicate with the Internet. These files are placed into the
local-with-filesystem sandbox.

Access the network only

A Flash author can specify that a SWF file be able to communicate between the local system and
the network, but not have access to the local file system where it is installed. These files are placed
into the local-with-networking sandbox.

Access to the local file system and the network

Application installers, end users, and administrators can specify that local SWFs are allowed to read
from the local file system, determine the location where they are installed, read and write to and
from servers, and cross-script with other SWF files on either the network or the local file system.
These files are called trusted, and are placed into the local-trusted sandbox.

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CHAPTER 7 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS

Each of these sandboxes is discussed in more detail in the following sections, and in even greater detail
in white papers and other documents that are available online; see Additional security resources.
A Flash author can use the API System.security.sandboxType (ActionScript 1.0 or 2.0) or
Security.sandboxType (ActionScript 3.0) to determine the sandbox in which a SWF file is placed.
This API must be used while the SWF file is playing in a browser, not through the use of the Test Movie
command in Flash. When SWF files run via Test Movie, local security is not implemented.

The local-with-file-system sandbox

By default, Flash Player places all local SWF files, including all legacy local SWF files (earlier than Flash
Player 8), in the local-with-file-system sandbox. For some legacy SWF files, operations could be affected
by prohibiting outside network access, but this default provides the most secure implementation. For
more information on potential issues with legacy SWF files, see About compatibility with previous Flash
Player security models.

The local-with-networking sandbox

When an ActionScript developer specifies that local SWF files should be assigned to the
local-with-networking sandbox, the SWF files are allowed to access the network, but are blocked from
accessing the local file system. Also, a SWF file running in the local-with-networking sandbox is only
allowed to read network-derived data when permissions are present for that action.

The local-trusted sandbox

As its name implies, placing files in this sandbox indicates that they can be trusted not to perform any
malicious activities that would compromise the security of the local system or of the network. SWF files
assigned to the local-trusted sandbox can interact with any other SWF files, and load data from anywhere
(remote or local). Files (or entire directories) can be registered as trusted in a number of ways.
• An end user can respond to a pop-up dialog box or use the Flash Player Settings Manager to specify
that a SWF file or set of files should be trusted for that user. For information on settings available
to end-users, see User‐configured settings. For information on how to control the end-users’ ability
to specify trusted files, see AllowUserLocalTrust.
• An administrator, an installer program, or an end-user can create configuration files and place them
directly in the appropriate directories. The configuration files are placed in a directory named Flash-
PlayerTrust on the user’s computer, in one of two locations. One location requires administrative
access and applies to all users on a computer; see The Global FlashPlayerTrust directory. The other
location doesn’t require administrative access and applies only to the current user; see The User
FlashPlayerTrust directory.

About compatibility with previous Flash Player security models

While great pains are taken to preserve the backward compatibility of SWF content when played in any
version of Adobe Flash Player, security changes sometimes preclude the possibility of compatibility with

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CHAPTER 7 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS

older versions. It is possible that SWF content that runs as expected in an old version of Adobe Flash
Player may not run as expected in subsequent versions. In these cases, administrators can generally
disable individual security sections in order to preserve backward compatibility until applications can be
modified to accommodate new security requirements.
For example, local SWF files are blocked from communicating with the Internet without a specific config-
uration on the user’s computer. Suppose you have legacy content that was published before these
restrictions were in effect. If that content tries to communicate with the network, local file system, or
both, Adobe Flash Player would block those operations. In those instances, Adobe Flash Player would
present a permission dialog to the end-user.
NOTE: In most security scenarios, restrictions are enforced silently with no opportunity for the end-user
to intervene or loosen security constraints beyond modifying mms.cfg.
To prevent users from having to provide permission explicitly, Flash provides a number of options.
• An end-user can use the Global Security Settings Panel at www.adobe.com/go/global_security_set-
tings to specify that a file or set of files should be trusted.
• An end-user, or an installer program run without administrative access, can place a local configura-
tion file on the user’s machine to specify that a file or set of files should be trusted (see The User
FlashPlayerTrust directory).
• Administrators or an installer program run with administrative access can place a global configura-
tion file on the user’s machine to specify that files should be trusted (see The Global FlashPlayer‐
Trust directory).
• You can set an option in a configuration file you deploy to users’ machines, the mms.cfg file, to
always allow or always deny such access (see Security options in Administration).
• You can run a free, command-line utility called the Local Content Updater on the legacy SWF files.
The Local Content Updater lets you change the security sandbox that the SWF file operates in when
it is played as a local file in Flash Player 8 and above. It can add, remove, or check for
local-with-networking privileges, operating on one or many SWF files. For more information or to
download the utility, see Local Content Updater at www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/down-
loads.html#lcu.

Data loading through different domains

To make data from a web server available to SWF files from other domains, you may be asked by a Flash
author to create a policy file on your server. Policy files are XML files placed in a specific location on your
server.
Policy files affect access to a number of assets, including the following:
• Data in bitmaps, sounds, and videos
• Loading XML and text files
• Importing SWF files from other security domains into the security domain of the loading SWF file
• Access to socket and XML socket connections
There are two types of policy files—Cross-domain policy files and socket policy files.

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CHAPTER 7 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS

• Cross-domain policy files provide a way for the server to indicate that its data and documents are
available to SWF files served from certain domains or from all domains.
• Socket policy files enable networking directly at the lower TCP socket level, using the Socket and
XMLSocket classes.

Additional security resources

For quick reference, the following list summarizes various web pages and documents related to security,
many of which are mentioned elsewhere in this chapter or in other chapters in this book.
• Flash Player Security and Privacy (www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/security/). This docu-
ment provides an overview of how Flash Player maintains users’ privacy.
• Security Topic Center (www.adobe.com/devnet/security/). This document provides information on
security and links to a number of other resources.
• Flash Player Developer Center (www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer). This site provides links to a
number of security-related documents geared for developers.
• Flash Player 9 Security white paper (www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/flash_play-
er9_security_wp.html). This document focuses on how Flash Player 9.0.124.0 addresses a number
of issues related to security, including features previously introduced in earlier versions of the
product.
• Security changes in Flash Player 10 (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/fplay-
er10_security_changes.html).
• Flash Player Help for user setting panels (www.adobe.com/go/player_help_en). These pages
explain security settings users can specify using the Settings Manager, settings dialog boxes, and
questions that might pop up while a SWF is running.
• “How do I let local Flash content communicate with the Internet?”(www.adobe.com/go/4c093f20).
This document describes the security issues involved in allowing (or preventing) local SWF files
from accessing the Internet.
• The Flash Player Local Content Updater (www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/down-
loads.html#lcu) lets you change the security sandbox in which SWF files written for Flash Player 7
and earlier operate.
• ActionScript 2.0 and Security (see the “Understanding Security” chapter in Learning ActionScript
2.0 in Adobe Flash).

71