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I am running firefox 11 on ubuntu 10.04 and every time I close the program it continues to run in the background. What worries me even more is that the flash plugin is also running in the background:

ps aux | grep firefox
userxx     99999 11.4 10.3 689152 105696 ?       Ssl  22:33   0:30 /usr/lib/firefox-11.0/firefox
userxx     99998  0.0  2.8 333912 29064  ?        Sl  22:34   0:00 /usr/lib/firefox-11.0/plugin-container /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so -greomni /usr/lib/firefox-11.0/omni.ja 13568 true plugin

Is this normal behaviour, or even just an innocent bug? Should I be worried about malware reading and writing to my personal files?

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  • Have you tried to update Firefox to the current version?
    – Ramhound
    Apr 6, 2012 at 19:03
  • @Ramhound Firefox 11 is the most recent version.
    – Hendrik Brummermann
    Apr 7, 2012 at 0:51
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    appears to be the default behaviour. I have the same output on my Ubuntu Maverick laptop.
    – user9270
    Apr 22, 2012 at 3:01
  • I have the same prob with windows 8...althou im not getting it in ubuntu 12.04.
    – user9442
    Apr 30, 2012 at 8:38

1 Answer 1

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It's not a bug, it's a feature. It might be abused for evil purposes, or misused by developers.

Install NoScript addon, no flash plugin will fire itself up without your consent. This is why firefox will always be more secure than Chrome, alternatives are not up to the task yet and for some reasons it takes time for google developers to provide the necessary interface to NoScript developers in order to easily port it fully. Anyways, they do a great job and keep up with every known abuse of web browsing technology. A must have if you mind about security.

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  • 1
    "Firefox" isn't more secure if users have to magically know to change the defaults to achieve that security. I do like using Firefox+NoScript, but when you unblock flash on Linux it's not confined (unlike Chrome on Linux). So where you unlock it, you become vulnerable to the security bugs in flash. security.stackexchange.com/questions/76486/…
    – sourcejedi
    Dec 19, 2014 at 22:53
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    @sourcejedi: I disagree because I repeat it, chrome does not support NoScript and browsing without no script is just screaming to get hacked. Of course flash is an issue, and it will always be.
    – Aki
    Jan 5, 2015 at 0:12

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