SARS launches its own Internet browser to solve Flash problems

[CraigMenace]

That is indicative of them not following best practices. I wonder how deep this runs in the organisation?

lolololol They cant even practice good governance. Not sure they know of such a term.... Follow best practice. Ke? ANCancer is not capable of such things. Its below them.. Who will protect us from this bunch of tools.

 

[Fulcrum29]

lolololol They cant even practice good governance. Not sure they know of such a term.... Follow best practice. Ke? ANCancer is not capable of such things. Its below them.. Who will protect us from this bunch of tools.

SARS is our national revenue service, IT audits and controls are fundamental for the continuity of their services. For them to state this,

In an interview with 702’s The Money Show, Intikhab Shaik, head of technology and solutions delivery at SARS, told Bruce Whitfield that SARS did not expect Adobe would “actually block” Flash Player from working. This happened on 12 January 2021.

is a lie. The reasons for them failing is due to a series of flaws, that we know, but to lie about this would mean that there are more issues within SARS than they care to admit, being evasive is the indication thereof.

 

[Vrotappel]

Once again. Very few people will ever need to use this browser. Except that some people on this thread seem hellbent on creating the impression that everyone needs this browser to eFile, which will cause aunt Sannie to download it and thereby create an opportunity for scammers to exploit the situation.

Actually it is a huge problem. If you know have a problem to file your return (believe me there are many people struggling) the first thing SARS call center will tell you is to download SARS Brrowser.

3 decades of experience with SARS I know exactly what a mess this is.

Some decisions taken the last 2 years boggles the mind. One would expected things to improve under Kieswetter but he appears to be only focused on GBV and Corona. Otherwise other leaders in SARS is leading him around by the nose.

 

[konfab]

Actually it is a huge problem. If you know have a problem to file your return (believe me there are many people struggling) the first thing SARS call center will tell you is to download SARS Brrowser.

3 decades of experience with SARS I know exactly what a mess this is.

Some decisions taken the last 2 years boggles the mind. One would expected things to improve under Kieswetter but he appears to be only focused on GBV and Corona. Otherwise other leaders in SARS is leading him around by the nose.

To be fair, downloading a fork of Chromium is far better to the client that what goes on with their other software which needs exact versions of java.

 

[Speedster]

Actually it is a huge problem. If you know have a problem to file your return (believe me there are many people struggling) the first thing SARS call center will tell you is to download SARS Brrowser.

3 decades of experience with SARS I know exactly what a mess this is.

Some decisions taken the last 2 years boggles the mind. One would expected things to improve under Kieswetter but he appears to be only focused on GBV and Corona. Otherwise other leaders in SARS is leading him around by the nose.

This issue has absolutely zero to do with submitting your tax return.

 

[Swa]

Fair enough. They're welcome to fire the whole IT dept. How does that help me submit the affected forms though?

It's January. Tax season is mid year giving them ample time to fix it but if need be the right thing would have been to postpone filing rather than put people at risk. But if they were competent they would not have allowed it to reach this point in the first place. There's been issues for years now not only because they decided to go with flash but because they can't even implement it correctly. There's a Chinese saying about the best time to plant a tree and the second best time to do so...

 

[neoprema]

There will be some convoluted over-the-top Tender worth millions to fix this, and they'll land up dusting off Frontpage to build the "new" site for millions of Rands.

 

[jbroo]

I just did my tax returns after having been too lazy for a few years (credit to this thread for sparking my interest) and it was fine. I use Opera on Windows. It seems most of their forms have been migrated to HTML5 already, barring a few, for which you would need to use the SARS browser. See pic. The mobile app also worked fine.

This is hardly as dramatic as the comments here imply.

 

[TheRoDent]

Basic analysis:

Installer is signed by "Harman International Industries, Incorporated".



As is "SARS Efiling.exe" which the installer installs.

It's a custom repack of Chromium 10.1.5 which was released on October 23, 2020, that identifies itself
as Chrome 85


The only included plugin is Flash (HCSFP.dll) 50.0 r0.



The browser doesn't allow navigating to any URL other than sarsefiling.co.za

I'm quite surprised that they managed to find a "fix" within 26 days of Flash expiring, but clearly they had some help from "Harman International Industries".

 

[PsyWulf]

Thats a very odd company to sign this,I see no speaker wire here

 

[John_Phoenix]

Someone needs to check the defaults... Chrome / Chromium has some really "cool" 3rd party connection settings.

Guys, lets be real, this is a monumental cockup... For many reasons.

And lastly, did they leave devtools in per chance?

 

[Speedster]

It's January. Tax season is mid year giving them ample time to fix it but if need be the right thing would have been to postpone filing rather than put people at risk. But if they were competent they would not have allowed it to reach this point in the first place. There's been issues for years now not only because they decided to go with flash but because they can't even implement it correctly. There's a Chinese saying about the best time to plant a tree and the second best time to do so...

This issue has zero to do with the filing of tax returns.

 

[envo]

So over the 4 years since it was announced that Flash would be dropped from all browsers/support, their solution is to bring a browser with Flash support, instead of focusing development efforts to re-write the web portion into something like HTML 5?

Don't tell me they DIDN'T have the budget for this, because I'll call BS.

This seems to reek of management's failure to show up for meetings and/or know what is happening in the tech industry and some lone developer on the team finding a quick solution for them to continue without costing time/money.

 

[envo]

It's January. Tax season is mid year giving them ample time to fix it but if need be the right thing would have been to postpone filing rather than put people at risk. But if they were competent they would not have allowed it to reach this point in the first place. There's been issues for years now not only because they decided to go with flash but because they can't even implement it correctly. There's a Chinese saying about the best time to plant a tree and the second best time to do so...

You don't run a business do you? Because filing for businesses is now.

 

[Speedster]

You don't run a business do you? Because filing for businesses is now.

And works on html5

 

[Swa]

This issue has zero to do with the filing of tax returns.

All the more reason not to have this abomination then.

You don't run a business do you? Because filing for businesses is now.

See the rest of my comment about postponing what doesn't work, as well as general tax filing not being among one of the affected services.

 

[Cius]

This is so idiotic I don't even know where to begin. This is like saying my car needs new tires. But I can't change my tires now for whatever reason so instead I will build a new road made of rubber, so that I can keep driving on these tires.

The the stupidity. I will not enter a single detail on that web browser.

 

[backstreetboy]

This is so idiotic I don't even know where to begin. This is like saying my car needs new tires. But I can't change my tires now for whatever reason so instead I will build a new road made of rubber, so that I can keep driving on these tires.

The the stupidity. I will not enter a single detail on that web browser.

 

[Speedster]

This is so idiotic I don't even know where to begin. This is like saying my car needs new tires. But I can't change my tires now for whatever reason so instead I will build a new road made of rubber, so that I can keep driving on these tires.

The the stupidity. I will not enter a single detail on that web browser.

The good news for you is you'll never have to. But hey, since when has reading been a thing..

View attachment 1001602

Lol. Except that very few people will ever have need of the forms this browser is needed for.

 

[Fulcrum29]

Basic analysis:

Installer is signed by "Harman International Industries, Incorporated".

View attachment 1001222

As is "SARS Efiling.exe" which the installer installs.

It's a custom repack of Chromium 10.1.5 which was released on October 23, 2020, that identifies itself
as Chrome 85
View attachment 1001230

The only included plugin is Flash (HCSFP.dll) 50.0 r0.

View attachment 1001224

The browser doesn't allow navigating to any URL other than sarsefiling.co.za

I'm quite surprised that they managed to find a "fix" within 26 days of Flash expiring, but clearly they had some help from "Harman International Industries".

Adobe Flash Support and Migration | Harman Flash Player | HARMAN

HARMAN's Adobe Flash Support solutions assure web-based flash or a mobile or desktop application continuity, and upgrade to HTML5 with a robust set of HARMAN tools and framework.

services.harman.com

HARMAN’S SUPPORT PROGRAM FOR ADOBE® FLASH® PLAYER​

Flash Player is installed on hundreds of millions of systems. However, effective end of 2020, Adobe announced the end of Flash Player support and hence this will not be available for download from their website, and browser vendors will update their browsers to remove the Flash Player.

However, several companies have significant Flex and Flash-based applications currently in use, either for internal access by employees or as customer-facing applications. HARMAN's exclusive agreement with Adobe to provide extended licensing and support agreements for enterprise Flash Player means that companies can be offered a further time for migrating their Flash-based application to HTML/JavaScript solutions. HARMAN will offer support and security updates to Adobe Flash Player and can provide solutions until the end of 2023 and beyond.

Apart from enterprise support for the Flash Player, HARMAN also now supports Adobe AIR® SDK which can be used to package and deploy applications that are purely based on SWF content, and is widely used for cross-platform applications and games. See https://airsdk.harman.com for more details.

PACKAGED BROWSER SOLUTION​

Where enterprise applications are a mixture of web (HTML/JavaScript) and Flash (or Flex) content, AIR is unlikely to provide full capabilities and so HARMAN is offering the “Packaged Browser" solution as a customised software product that can be licensed for use beyond end of 2020 and allows an existing Flash-based web application to continue working like before.

The “Packaged Browser" is essentially an application that wraps up a browser engine along with the Flash Player and is locked to your web-based Flash application taking on appropriate branding. It is deployed as a separate application, so it needs to be installed by an end user and accessed as a desktop application. It is like a browser tab without the navigational UI and with a Flash Player isolated from the rest of the system.

This application works by loading in the appropriate browser engine and directing this to the predefined URL that hosts the web-based application. The browser engine then loads the custom version of the Flash Player as provided under license by HARMAN. The web-based application is then displayed as if it were running in a normal web page.

ADOBE SOLUTIONS FOR MOBILE AND DESKTOP PLATFORMS​

HARMAN provides support on behalf of Adobe® for the Adobe AIR® software and the AIR SDK, and extended support for Adobe Flash® Player for enterprise customers. HARMAN's offerings also include consultancy, support and migration services for companies looking to move their applications away from Flash technologies over to HTML5 via solutions such as Angular, Apache Royale and other JavaScript based frameworks.
For the AIR SDK, please visit our dedicated website at https://airsdk.harman.com

...

Drive Uninterrupted Business Outcomes​

Adobe Flash Player will no longer be supported by Adobe or by any standard browsers beyond 2020. However, if the enterprise customers require Flash Player, then HARMAN will be able to offer them a solution that combines the regular Flash Player with customer’s SWF application. This will allow for a useful stop-gap for existing applications to continue to be used with little or no modifications, whilst long term plans for migration away from the Flash content are put into action.

HARMAN also offers alternative deployment and licensing models for Flash Player, for companies wishing to embed Flash Player into their own hardware or software products.

I assume they contacted Adobe who put them in touch with Harman.