Since 31 december 2020 Flash is end of life and since 12 januari 2021 it is blocked in browsers and automatically removed via windows update. To see the official Adobe newsitem read this item: Adobe Flash Player End of Life
Possible solutions
Thats all great but what if for example your vCenter is version 6.7 or lower. See this article for affected versions (VMware Flash End of Life and Supportability (78589)).
Pro tip: Please Please upgrade to a version that doesn’t require Flash. Using flash is a security risk!
But if you need an alternative in the meantime you can try this:
Option 1: Ruffle
Ruffle is an Flash player emulator that runs in most modern webbrowsers
- Download the latest version of ruffle for Chromium-based browsers (e.g. Google Chrome and the new Microsoft Edge) from the official download site.
- Unpack the archive once it is downloaded.
- Load chrome://extensions/ in the address bar.
- Enable Developer Mode on the page that opens.
- Select Load unpacked and pick the folder you unpacked the extension to.
Although the current version does not work 100% you can try this to see if will work for your version of VMware product.
Option 2: Stop browser updates
This option only works if you haven’t installed KB4577586 on your system because when that update is installed it’s no longer possible to run flash on your system. besides an independant rollup it’s also possible it is included in a rollup package so watch out when updating!
The Enterprise enablement functionality available in Adobe’s latest releases of Flash Player can be used to allow content from specified sites to be displayed. For more information, see the Enterprise enablement support section of the Adobe Flash Player EOL Enterprise Information Page.
you need to create or edit this file:”mms.cfg”
The location of the mms.cfg file depends on the operating system and the browser in use. For more information, refer to your vendor documentation.
For example:
| Operating System and Browser | Location |
| Google Chrome on Windows | %localappdata%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\System\mms.cfg |
| Edge Chromium on Windows | %localappdata%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\System\mms.cfg |
| 32-bit Windows | %windir%\System32\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg |
| 64-bit Windows | %windir%\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg |
| MacOS | /Library/Application Support/Macromedia |
| Google Chrome on MacOS | /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Pepper Data/Shockwave Flash/System |
and set these parameters
EOLUninstallDisable=1
EnableAllowList=1
AllowListPreview=1
AllowListUrlPattern=https://FQDN_Of_The_Target_System/
VMware supplied a list in the article with supported browser versions.
- Adobe Flash Player 32.0.0.445
- Firefox 81.0.2
- IE 11.0.9600.19846
- Microsoft Edge Version 86.0.622.51
- Google Chrome Version 86.0.4240.111
Option 3: And what if option 1 and 2 fail
So when option 1 and 2 are not working because the update was already installed before pre-emptive measures where taken or when you find out after the
Please, please, please only use this as a last resort, talk to your security people about implementing this and have a deadline for removing this to keep the solution as ‘safe as possible’.
This option is only for the brave. You could deploy a virtual machine from an iso and do not update the machine! Next thing is firewall the sh*t out of that thing so it can’t connect to internet and only allows RDP inbound and https outbound to selected Ip addresses. after that is done you can install Firefox 82.0.1 from this url: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/82.0.1/
Next download the latest version of flash player here:
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/latest/help/install_flash_player.exe
Next steps are the same as in option 2: you need to create or edit this file:”mms.cfg”
The location of the mms.cfg file depends on the operating system and the browser in use. For more information, refer to your vendor documentation.
For example:
| Operating System and Browser | Location |
| Google Chrome on Windows | %localappdata%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\System\mms.cfg |
| Edge Chromium on Windows | %localappdata%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\System\mms.cfg |
| 32-bit Windows | %windir%\System32\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg |
| 64-bit Windows | %windir%\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg |
| MacOS | /Library/Application Support/Macromedia |
| Google Chrome on MacOS | /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Pepper Data/Shockwave Flash/System |
and set these parameters
EOLUninstallDisable=1
EnableAllowList=1
AllowListPreview=1
AllowListUrlPattern=https://FQDN_Of_The_Target_System/
Extra Disclaimer: This information is supplied as is! and it is at your own risk!!