606239 - VLC Media Player starts

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Extension Compatibility, defect)

Description

[Steve Willson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100914 Firefox/3.6.10 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100914 Firefox/3.6.10 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

VLC Media Player suddenly opens.  No video plays, but it opens without me touching any keys.  I think it is related to websites that automatically run videos and your method of handling extensions.  I'm wondering if something is trying to access my computer via VLC.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Comment 1

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Do you have a plugin that forwards to VLC? If so any page with an <embed> tag that uses a content type associated with that plugin can launch it and that in turn will launch VLC. You can check the MIME types associated with enabled plugins by going to the built-in url about:plugins and you can disable/re-enable plugins through the add-ons dialog (found on the Tools menu). While you're looking check to see if you plugins are up to date at https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/plugincheck/

The other possibility is that at some time in the past you downloaded content that VLC could handle, clicked the "Open" (rather than "Save") button, and checked the remember-this-action box. If that's the case then any website that tries to download content of that type will end up launching VLC. If it's invalid content then it's not going to play.

There are currently some attacks against old Windows Media Player vulnerabilities making the rounds. It's possible you've associated those movie types with VLC and are stumbling across attempted attacks. If you've saved the "open this every time" choice (for _any_ type) I strongly urge you to change it back to "ask me every time". You can do this by 
 1. open the Options/Preference dialog (Tools menu on windows)
 2. click on the Applications tab
 3. change any types opening in VLC to "Always ask"

Comment 2

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Reporter, what version of VLC do you have installed? Does this happen with Firefox 3.6.13 or later?

Comment 3

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

Mass-closing old Extension Compatibility bugs that relate to legacy add-ons or NPAPI plug-ins. If you think this bug is still valid, please reopen or comment.

Sorry for the bug spam, and happy Friday!