Flash end stops trains in China

The story is at least fun to tell, but it doesn’t make those who use the Dalian (6.7 million people) trains located in northern China laugh. In fact, as announced Verietyinfo site, Adobe Flash results had unintended consequences for the local railroad company. This completely prevented the movement of trains. Still uses flash, train sending mode not fully functional. Gradually, many other systems were planted for the same reason. After December 31, 2020, Adobe set out until January 12, 2021 to permanently block Flash content.

Faced with this problem, the city of Dalian set up a team of experts to find an alternative solution. During their investigation, they discovered that the railway company had two types of computers to handle traffic: a system with the original Windows and a system running on a pirate version called “Ghost”. While the former were easily repaired, the latter required intervention and testing at various stations.

Downloads an older version of Flash as a Redeemer

After more than 20 hours of work, the salvation came from a very simple idea: downloading the old version of Flash on a hacked computer. According to discussions on Chinese social networks, the recovered version is 2018 to 29. The Railways called this chapter “the best technical news of the beginning of 2021”. Since the post was removed.

However many questions arise after this affair. The flash result did not come suddenly. Adobe and Microsoft have been warning for months on the schedule to close the service. So the IT teams had time to prepare and modify the settings accordingly. In addition, the existence of hacked systems therefore includes risks to users in the absence of security or functional update. Another thing is, do other Chinese applications (electricity, water, public transport) still run on this obsolete technology?