Flex Security sandbox violation

Working in Flex and/or Flash you often run into the same problem many times and forget the easy and common sense answer.  Security sandbox violations for me is one of those cases.

Googling for answers is usually fruitless and starts talking about server side crossdomain.xml policy files and meta data.  These are important in the long run but what about when they’re in place and you’re just testing new client side code.  Well I’ve done this a few times now and EVERY time I do it I completely forget the quick and easy work around.  So if you’ve looked into the crossdomain.xml tutorials and everything is ship shape but you still can’t test from your local machine I suggest doing the following.

​1. right click on any .swf file

​2. choose “Settings…”

​3. Privacy Tab

​4. “Advanced…” button

this will load up an Adobe page that allows you to change and tweak global settings in Flash player that can only be done so there.  It’s pretty clutch.

​5. click “Global Security Settings Panel” on the left side menu

​6. click “Edit Locations…”

​7. click “Add Locations…”

​8. in the prompt window that comes up put /

​9. click confirm

​10. change radio button to “Always allow”

Wahlah… your local .swf files are now null and void as far as cross domain sandbox rules are concerned in the world of Flash player.

What you’ve essentially done here is tell Flash Player to ignore security rules for any files in your root files system.  If you’re security minded and run a lot of .swf files that you don’t trust locally I wouldn’t recommend this setting as it completely overrides security measures put in place to protect you.  You can also use the “browse” functionality to pick specific files which realistically is much safer from a security stand point.  I myself don’t worry about it because I don’t store any .swf files locally when it boils down to it.