Mozilla Firefox to Warn Users of Vulnerable Plug-Ins

According to the Mozilla blog, Starting with the release of Firefox 3.5.3 and Firefox 3.0.14 respectivly, Mozilla will begin warnig users to update their Adobe Flash Plug-ins if they are using a vulnerable version. Mozilla says stoping the Adobe Flash Attack vector will help make users more secure online.

Mozilla states that:

“Our intent is to get the users attention of the outdated or vulnerable plugin, and pont them in the right direction to get it updated”

These versions of Firefox are set to ship tomorrow, and Mozilla states it will work with plugin vendors to add detection and update warnings to other plugins like Microsoft Silver-light, Sun Java, and other plugins.

Some studies have shown that 80% of web users are using an old and vulnerable version of Flash. This is a big step from Mozilla to get users to upgrade their Flash to the latest version to prevent malware infections. This will help stem the drive-by downloads and exploits that rely on old vulnerable versions of Flash. I just wonder if Microsoft will follow suit with Internet Explorer, and if Google will follow suit with Chrome.