Mozilla launched a tool that lets users of rival browsers, including Internet Explorer (IE), Chrome, Safari and Opera, determine whether important add-ons may be vulnerable to attack.
The Web-based tool - an extension of plug-in checking that Mozilla began adding to Firefox 3 last year - was originally slated for a late March debut, but Mozilla delayed its release in order to beef up the list of plug-ins the service scans.

The "Plugin Check" tool lets users of Apple's Safari 4, Google's Chrome 4 and Opera Software's Opera 10.5 scan their browsers for outdated plug-ins such as Apple's QuickTime or Adobe's Flash and Reader that are frequently targeted by hackers.

Support for Microsoft's browser is limited to IE7 and IE8, and the tool checks a smaller number of plug-ins for IE than it does for other browsers. "Since IE requires specific code to be written for each plug-in, it will take us a little longer to get to full coverage," said Johnathan Nightingale, director of Firefox development, in a post to Mozilla's security blog.

The tool detected Microsoft's own Silverlight and Adobe's Flash plug-ins in a test of IE8 by Computerworld, but failed to spot the Adobe Reader plug-in.

The link for this article located at Tech World is no longer available.