If any of them has a bug, then it is a potential security risk. The problem with having such a long list of plugins is that each of those are a direct link from any website to your computer. You don’t necessarily have to uninstall each software program that you don’t want to have access to your browser simply disabling them works.
You can go through this list and see which ones you need and which you should disable.
The main issue is that applications love to add plugins to your browser, which is why you need to go to this window on a regular basis. Fortunately the list is sorted by company so you can quickly see those that come from Microsoft and those made by some unknown entity. This list can be quite long and you may be surprised at some of the names that you will find.
This will bring you to the add-ons window where you can see a list of plugins. In order to see which plugins are installed in Internet Explorer, you can simply click on the gear icon on the toolbar and select Manage add-ons. Just recently, Twitter was suggesting that everyone disable Java in their browsers due to the unbelievable number of security holes it has had in the past years. Instead, we will focus more on the standard plugins, those that constantly seem to be getting hacked. This is still a serious issue, but it is harder to exploit and get useful data from you this way. They simply do not have access to the underlying system, and even if a bug is found, the worst that can happen is something like cross-site scripting. These extensions rarely have serious vulnerabilities in them because the attack surface is much lower. And then there are extensions, things that run inside of the browser’s environment, such as AdBlock and NoScript, basically anything you can get through the Mozilla extension library or the Chrome web marketplace. This includes Flash and Java, which have a browser hook so that any web page can get access to the code on your machine. Plugins are actual software programs on our computers that interface with the browser. Worse, plenty of software out there add their own plugins and it can be difficult to get rid of them.Īdd-ons come in many types. The reason is simple - we all use them, and most of us don’t keep track of which add-ons we have installed. So instead, the bad guys are looking at other avenues, and the one place that is now the most common attack vector is through a browser plugin. As security has improved in operating systems, the lower layers have become harder for malware to attack. Often, this is done through browser plugins. Security advisories have become commonplace these days, with criminals going to unprecedented lengths in order to steal data and infect computers. Patrick Lambert offers some basic tips on how to check web plugins in four major browsers. How to check and configure your browser plugins
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