Mozilla Tool Checks for Unsafe Plugins for Chrome, Safari and IE

Operating systems are becoming more secure these days and web browsers are faring a lot better than they did just a few years ago. So attackers are moving to the next thing down the line, browser plugins. Things like the Adobe Flash Player or Java can contain some nasty vulnerabilities and nefarious individuals waste no time in exploiting them.

It’s highly recommended that you keep your plugins updated, but it’s hard to keep track of development and new releases. This is where Mozilla’s Plugin Check comes in, a simple tool to verify that you are running the latest software. And the best part is, it now works for most browsers out there, not just Firefox.

“We believe that plugin safety is an issue for the web as a whole, so while our initial efforts focused on building a page that would work for Firefox users, the team has since expanded plugin check coverage to work with Safari 4, Chrome 4, and Opera 10.5,” Johnathan Nightingale, director of Firefox Development, wrote in a blog post.

“We have added support for Internet Explorer 7 and 8 for the most popular plugins, as well, but since IE requires specific code to be written for each plugin it will take us a little longer to get to full coverage,” he explained.

Using the tool is trivial. Just visit the Plugin Check page Mozilla has provided and let it do all the rest. It immediately checks to see the version number of the plugins you have installed and then compares it with what it knows are the latest versions.

If you have a habit of updating your plugins, or they have an automated update system, you should be in the clear. If not, the page will warn you that you should upgrade and provide you with a direct link to the plugin maker. If it fails to identify the plugin or the version number, it provides a Google search link for it. The tool is available for Safari, Chrome, Opera and, of course, Firefox. It also works for Internet Explorer 7 and 8 for a few plugins.

Plugin security has been a major issue of late. Firefox 3.6 got an integrated plugin check, which runs automatically and warns users if they have an insecure version. Mozilla has also been known to blacklist certain plugins if they are unsafe. Google Chrome took another approach by integrating the Adobe Flash plugin with the browser, in a sense, and updating it automatically using the same mechanism Chrome does to keep up-to-date.