What have web browsers done about NPAPI?Īll the way back in 2010, Google announced their built in PDF reader (which uses PPAPI), which they boasted about using a sandbox, helping to protect from malware and security attacks targeted at PDF files. Chrome’s solution for dropping NPAPI is a new API called PPAPI (Pepper Plugin Application Programming Interface) where plugins run inside a sandbox, limiting the amount of damage that a vulnerable plugin can do. The growth of HTML5 has helped to reduce web browser dependence on plugins (and to increase the performance of web browsers), but it has only got us part of the way there. What has been getting in their way is that there were and are some extremely popular uses of NPAPI, such as Adobe Reader, Flash, and Silverlight. It’s no surprise then, that web browser makers have been on a bit of a crusade in recent years to eliminate this attack vector. The huge problem however is that it means that if that an application has a security vulnerability it can allow the attacker access to the host computer, which has potentially very dangerous consequences. The simplest way to describe NPAPI is that it’s a thin layer between the web browser and the operating system that allows the web browser to defer to applications installed on the local file system in order to display content that the web browser itself can not handle. Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Google Chrome, and others have all supported NPAPI either in the past or to this day. As the web expanded and other web browsers were born, they also adopted NPAPI. NPAPI (Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface) was created all the way back in 1995 by John Warnock and Allan Padgett at Adobe, who wanted to display PDF files from within the web browser (Netscape Navigator 2.0, at the time). Here is a brief history of plugins in web browsers, along with an explanation of what the implications are of Google killing off NPAPI in Chrome. With the recent news that Google has now killed off NPAPI plugins in Chrome 45, it has left many wondering exactly what NPAPI plugins are, and what impact this news will have, if any. Septem3 min read What does it mean for you? What Chrome 45 dropping NPAPI Plug-in support means He oversees the BuildVu product strategy and roadmap in addition to spending lots of time writing code. Leon Atherton Leon is a developer at IDRsolutions and product manager for BuildVu.
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