CODEWITHSUNDEEP
flashsecurity
danwellman
danwellman

Reputation: 9253

Flash wants to run but no flash on site

When I visit a site I built some time ago in IE, I get the message bar at the bottom of the browser pop up saying that the site wants to run Flash.

This is fine, except for the fact that there is no flash in the website whatsoever.

What could cause this? How could Flash now be in the site? Is this a security issue?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 172

Answers (2)

Yaroslav Stavnichiy
Yaroslav Stavnichiy

Reputation: 21446

Google Analytics flash version detection could be turned off by adding the following to your GA code (before _trackPageview):

_gaq.push(['_setDetectFlash', false]);

This is what I did when faced with the same issue. I have no plans to use flash on my site so I do not need that kind of statistics.

Upvotes: 5

JimmiTh
JimmiTh

Reputation: 7449

After looking at the page, it looks like it's triggered by Google Analytics attempting to instantiate FlashPlayer to check if it's installed and what version it is. Doing that is enough to cause IE to think it should inform you that the page is trying to use Flash.

Update

Sent it through the script debugger in Developer Tools, and sure enough, the moment the content of ga.js is executed, the message pops up.

For anyone interested, specifically, it's likely to be this bit of "beautified" code (can't tell for sure, because Developer Tools can't figure out the minified script):

if (!(b = Zc)) {
   var c, d, e;
   d = "ShockwaveFlash";
   if ((b = (b = U[va]) ? b.plugins : g) && 0 < b[u]) 
     for (c = 0; c < b[u] && !e; c++) 
        d = b[c], -1 < d[q][p]("Shockwave Flash") && (e = d.description[w]("Shockwave Flash ")[1]);
else {
   d = d + "." + d;
   try {
      c = new ActiveXObject(d + ".7"), e = c.GetVariable("$version")
   } catch (f) {}
   if (!e) try {
      c = new ActiveXObject(d + ".6"), 
      e = "WIN 6,0,21,0", 
      c.AllowScriptAccess = "always", 
      e = c.GetVariable("$version")
   } catch (l) {}
   if (!e) try {
      c = new ActiveXObject(d), e = c.GetVariable("$version")
   } catch (o) {}
   e && (e = e[w](" ")[1][w](","), e = e[0] + "." + e[1] + " r" + e[2])
}
b = e ? e : "-"

... which amounts to a pretty standard FlashPlayer version detection.

Upvotes: 5

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