"Gnash supports the majority of Flash opcodes up to Small Web Format (SWF)
version 7,"

Minor nitpick, according to Adobe, SWF does not stand for anything,
informally however, I've never heard of it referred to as "Small Web Format"
(I have heard it referred to as "ShockWave Flash", but that's a somewhat
confusing definition these days).

See Macromedia's (now Adobe's) official position on it:
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2004/08/shockwave_vs_fl.cfm

On memory tests: It may be useful to provide a comparison of the official
standalone flash player running the exact same SWFs. (Perhaps both version 7
and version 9, so we can compare to how the official player has evolved, or
possibly gotten worse)

As far as security:
"Many Flash implementations contain potential security exploits that could
compromise a viewer's system." This is a bit vague, pretty much all software
contains potential security exploits, even open source software. The more
important metrics are the severity of the exploits, and how quickly they are
addressed.

"This can be used, for example, to compromise a network device inside a
company firewall via a Flash movie running on an employee's browser."
Unless you are talking about the occasional security-related bug in the
official player, this is simply not true. Flash has very strict sandboxes,
eg a flash movie running on an employee's browser, will not be able to open
any incoming ports, cannot read/write arbitrary files to the local computer,
and cannot make any connections besides back to the server where the flash
movie was loaded from. Flash has long left out features, in the name of
security. There are many things that can be done in Java or ActiveX, which
are not possible in Flash, due to the possibility of them being abused.

If you really want to know the nitty gritty details, the flash security
whitepaper is a good resource:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/flash_player_8_security.pdf
but it can be a bit dry reading (and is fairly long).

Overall, it's well written, and nicely presented, I'm impressed.

Thanks,
David R

On 8/15/07, Melissa Goldin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I've attached the first draft of the Gnash technical whitepaper.  It
> could use some technical review to make sure I've got the details right.
>
> I'm also looking for more information in the ActionScript and
> Security sections.  ActionScript is the subject I know the least
> about, and I'm pretty sure the memory footprint info is out of date.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
> Melissa
> _______________________________________________
> Gnash-dev mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev
>
>
>
_______________________________________________
Gnash-dev mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev

Reply via email to