are swfs still a virus threat ?

[acelian2002]

I am building a Flashsite and html site for my company. I will be using Flash and Dreamweaver to create and publish the site. I love bth programs!!! I have a real work of art for an IT who controls the server. He has Watchguard on our internet and has now blocked my access to viewing swf files. He keeps preaching how they are so vulnerable to virus and how they can ruin our server. He also told me that we need to talk about the issue of using swf's after I have been building pages for the last three weeks. RRRRRR!!!!I told him that he is talking old news and that Flash is alot safer as long as we keep up with the latest updates on Virus Protection. I would appreciate any positive feeback that I will pass along to my superviserand Boss as to why Flash still kicks butt and hopefully will shut this clown up once and for good.

Thanks as always and I appreciate all help!!

[Musicman]

Hi,

sorry for the late response .... but your admin is simply off track:
swf from the web cannot really carry malicious code, because macromedia makes their sandbox tighter than others.
This is different from executables (flash projector) which may be built with toolkits that offer access to system internals and thereby could be used to harm the viewer's system. These would never run on a server, however

The only way to inflict pain through flash is via javascript calls - and you could of course put the same harmful javascripts into html pages. Also it seems there is no way to use jscript

There has been, for a short time, a problem with a buffer overflow in flash player. However, whoever bans swf on that reason should also ban jpeg on the same grounds

Musicman