Bypass flash player version check or override the existing version number?

Question

Is it possible to bypass a flash player version check?

I'm using an old embedded Linux device with FF 2.0 and Flash Player 10. Unfortunately we cannot upgrade the existing version any further. YouTube and many other video sites are working fine when modifying the User Agent string of the browser. We only have problems with a few sites that check the Flash player version.

E.g. Flash player check in JavaScript:

if($('.video-player-container').length > 0){
if (swfobject.hasFlashPlayerVersion("10.2.0")) {
else { flashWarning.... }


Or is there a way to override the existing version number without upgrading the player?

Answer 1

You may use a little hack to change the displayed version number. Short indication to do it is to change the shared library file by replacing every occurrence of your old version number with the new one:

sudo sed -i -e 's/your_current_version/desired_version/g' /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so

After this, restart your browser and go to Adobe flash "about" page to see if it worked.

Longer indications may be found in this blog post.

edit: I should add a word of caution here: it is a very dirty method, which will likely work only until the next update of your flash player. And it will likely work only as long as the original and desired versions number have the same number of digits ! So, please do a backup of the original file before attempting it, i.e.

sudo cp /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so.backup

and to restore the original unaltered file, type:

sudo mv /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so.backup /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so