The majority of the blame should not be put solely on Microsoft though. Other software companies like Apple or Google have been doing exactly the same thing. Firefox users might notice a Google Update plugin or Apple iTunes plugin in the plugin section of the web browser. And those installations are not blocked by the Firefox browser.

There is however an option to block automatic plugin installations. It is not a perfect solution though but it is all that is provided currently. The Mozilla developers have added several directories and locations in the Firefox preferences that are automatically scanned by the web browser for plugins. If a plugin is found it will be added and activated in the browser.

These plugin directories are listed in the all.js files which is located in the greprefs directory of the Firefox installation. The following directories and locations are listed in the file (search for plugin or another word that will move the cursor to that position).

// Locate Java by scanning the Sun JRE installation directory with a minimum version
// Note: Does not scan if security.enable_java is not true
pref(”plugin.scan.SunJRE”, “1.3″);

// Locate plugins by scanning the Adobe Acrobat installation directory with a minimum version
pref(”plugin.scan.Acrobat”, “5.0″);

// Locate plugins by scanning the Quicktime installation directory with a minimum version
pref(”plugin.scan.Quicktime”, “5.0″);

// Locate and scan the Window Media Player installation directory for plugins with a minimum version
pref(”plugin.scan.WindowsMediaPlayer”, “7.0″);

// Locate plugins by the directories specified in the Windows registry for PLIDs
// Which is currently HKLM\Software\MozillaPlugins\xxxPLIDxxx\Path
pref(”plugin.scan.plid.all”, true);

// Controls the scanning of the Navigator 4.x directory for plugins
// When pref is missing, the default is to pickup popular plugins such as
// Flash, Shockwave, Acrobat, and Quicktime. If set to true, ALL plugins
// will be picked up and if set to false the scan will not happen at all
//pref(”plugin.scan.4xPluginFolder”, false);

As you can see there are entries for Sun Java, Adobe Acrobat, Apple Quicktime, the Windows Registry and Netscape plugins. Putting a comment in front of the plugin locations that should not be scanned will block those plugins from being started with Firefox (comments are added by adding // in front of a row).

Many Microsoft, Apple and Google plugins are added from the location in the Windows Registry. It is not advised to block that location completely as it also lists the Adobe Flash plugin in the Registry which would stop Flash support in the web browser. The only solution right now would be to go into the Registry and backup and remove the plugins that are not needed. If it were not for the Flash plugin the whole Registry location could be blocked from being scanned.

The programs will not add their plugins again to the Windows Registry unless they are updated or reinstalled. Another option to automatically block plugin installation (and display a prompt instead) is to use a software that will show a prompt before a specific Registry key is edited in Windows. A program like MJ Registry Watcher can do that. Simply add the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins key to the list of keys protected by the program to be informed whenever a software tried to change or add entries to the key.

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The following is a guide on how to remove the Windows Presentation Foundation plugin in the Firefox web browser for good. If the plugin would not be blacklisted it would be possible to find out about its dll files by typing in about:plugins in the web browser address bar.

The dll NPWPF.dll is the the Windows Presentation Foundation plugin. Here are the steps to remove it from the Firefox web browser (and other Mozilla products) for good:

• Close the Firefox web browser and every other Mozilla software that is running.
• Go to x:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Windows Presentation Foundation\ in windows Explorer where x is the drive letter where Windows is installed on the computer system.
• Locate the file NPWPF.dll
• Create a backup of the file by copying it to another location, e.g. to c:\backups\
• Delete the dll NPWPF.dll in the Windows Presentation Foundation folder
• Restart the computer

Open Firefox after the restart. The Windows Presentation Foundation plugin should not show up in the list of installed plugins anymore. There is a second step that might be necessary. There is also a Registry entry for the plugin. Do the following to remove the plugin from there as well:

• Open the Windows Registry, press [Windows key R], type regedit and hit [enter]
• Locate the Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins
• Locate the sub-key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@microsoft.com/WPF,version=3.5
• Right-click the sub-key and select Export to backup the key before deleting it.
• Delete the key in the Registry
• Restart the computer system or kill and reload explorer.exe in Windows to load the Registry without the key.

This should get rid of the Windows Presentation Foundation plugin in Firefox for now.

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The idea came up to extend this check to include other popular plugins as well. A first version of that plugin checker is now online and available at a test server which can be publicly accessed by anyone.

The scripts on the page will check for installed plugins and compare the version of the installed plugin with the latest version that is offered officially by the developer of the plugin. Supported are at the moment (among others) Apple Quicktime, Shockwave Flash, Adobe Acrobat, Java, RealPlayer and Windows Media Player plugins.

Plugins are either rated as safe or potentially vulnerable (there might be a third rating for vulnerable plugins). An update button is displayed next to potentially vulnerable plugins which should lead to a download page to update the latest version of the plugin. Some plugins do not reveal their full version which means that they will be shown as potentially vulnerable even if the latest version is installed.

Users who want to check out the Mozilla Plugin Check server right now can do so by visiting this link. They should know that the web browser will detect an invalid certificate and ignore it if they wish to continue. The plugin check website is working partially if other web browsers are used to connect to it.

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The interface is tab driven and one of the tabs provides access to the list of plugins. You might be surprised about the amount of plugins listed on the page. Each plugin is either shown as enabled or disabled. The enabled plugins are highlighted while the disabled plugins are grayed out a bit to visualize the difference nicely.

A button to enable or disable the plugin is provided after clicking on a specific plugin. The amount of plugins shown in the menu might surprise some users who never looked into there before.

The test system contained plugins for iTunes, Google Update, Microsoft DRM, Java, Microsoft Office, Flash, Quicktime, Silverlight, Windows Genuine Advantage, Windows Media Player and Windows Presentation Foundation. That’s a lot of plugins of which most are probably superfluous.

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The big question that I asked myself was if I really needed all those plugins. Before I could answer that question I had to find out which were installed. The command about:plugins in the address bar reveals all plugins currently loaded in Firefox. I discovered several plugins that I was not using for sure and some that I did not want to mess with.

An Adobe Reader plugin was still installed although I did uninstall the program a while ago. I discovered a Microsoft Office 2007 plugin, a Real Player plugin, AOL Media Playback plugin, Windows Presentation Foundation plugin and several more that I was pretty sure about that I did not need them.

The location of those plugins was mentioned in that menu as well which made it easy to track them down. I decided to move all plugins that I thought that I did not need anymore to a temporary location. This ensured that I would be able to move them back if I would discover that an application or website would need those plugins.

You should refresh the settings once you moved those plugins because sometimes other applications tend to take the place of those that you have removed.

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