In a pair of tweets, Alex Stamos has called on software company Adobe to announce an "end-of-life date for Flash."

Stamos echoed a number of recent complaints from the security community that the software has become the vector for just too many hacking vulnerabilities.
Last week, a 400GB cache of files stolen from spyware company Hacking Team revealed a major vulnerability in Flash that allowed hackers to execute malicious code on a target's machine via a website.

Although Adobe quickly issued a patch to fix the problem, Hacking Team's internal memos describe the flaw as "the most beautiful Flash bug for the last four years," suggesting it had been known about — and used — for some time previously.

Of course the Tame Apple press are reminding everyone that in 2010, Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously penned an open letter called "Thoughts on Flash," explaining why the company would not allow Adobe's software on its devices.

Actually for those of us who were around then Jobs was more worried that Flash was breaking his coding and although he did say that Flash had one of the "one of the worst security records in 2009" it was a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.

In any event, the world was too dependent on Flash at the time, and Jobs effectively was crippling the user experience on devices simply to get his own buggy programs to run.

Stamos is not calling for Adobe to immediately pull the plug on Flash, but wants Adobe to announce an eventual retirement date for the software, giving websites the time to move to more secure technology like HTML5.