Things to make a safety critical engineer shudder in terror...

[davidgillon]

...  using Adobe Flash to run your real-time train-tracking software

If it's not immediately obvious why this might be an issue, imagine if you were using software with widely known security flaws (and widely known non-security flaws) to run the radar screens in an air traffic control centre.

Deactivation of Flash may have crippled Chinese railroad for a day

You need to dig down into the top few comments, you want the one by Aube, to get to the explanation of what they were actually doing, but it sounds like a perfectly feasible use - that should never have been contemplated! The comment above it with the company using Flash to run their door security system is another "what were you thinking?!?"

We've known for over a decade that Flash is a bug-ridden security black hole, there's no excuse for using it in safety critical, or security critical applications. At least it's going to be more difficult from now on.

Comments

[hilarita]

Aaaaaugh!

This is up there with "let's use Excel to track covid case numbers. Of course we won't hit any of Excel's known limits with large datasets when dealing with crappy NHS IT!"

[davidgillon]

Yes, it's definitely another example of "let's use X because we already know it," rather than anyone looking at the problem and thinking "this is safety/mission critical, maybe we should use something designed for that."

[sovay]

... using Adobe Flash to run your real-time train-tracking software

I got to that line alone and screamed. And I am a very retrograde computer person!

(Your mood, location, and music are excellent.)

[davidgillon]

(Your mood, location, and music are excellent.)

Thank you :)