Disable Gecko Media Plugins in Abrowser

Project:Trisquel
Version:6.0
Component:Programs
Category:bug report
Priority:critical
Assigned:Unassigned
Status:closed
Description

Firefox just added support for OpenH264, and it downloads the plugin from Cisco: http://andreasgal.com/2014/10/14/openh264-now-in-firefox/. Although the plugin is free, it's downloading a binary from Cisco, which is an issue. It's useless anyway since we have GStreamer support enabled by default.

Please apply Parabola's patch to disable it: https://projects.parabola.nu/abslibre.git/tree/libre/iceweasel/non-openh264.patch.

Fri, 10/24/2014 - 04:15
Title:Disable OpenH264 in Abrowser» Disable Gecko Media Plugins in Abrowser
Priority:normal» critical

Good catch! The problem is way worse than what it looks.

This is done using https://wiki.mozilla.org/GeckoMediaPlugins which as far as I can tell allows Mozilla to install any binary into the browser, through a dedicated system of updates. They describe it as "a special purpose extension point for authorised 3rd party codecs and EME (Encrypted Media Extensions) CDMs (Content Decryption Modules)", which is nothing more than a series of euphemisms for DRM and other malware.

I'm disabling the whole thing in the settings. Curiously enough they didn't put a switch to turn the "feature" off, so I had to resort to changing the url for their repository to localhost:

pref("media.gmp-manager.url", "http://127.0.0.1/");

This change will get applied to versions tagged trisquel32 or newer.
A new set of Trisquel 7.0 RC isos will be generated.

Sat, 10/25/2014 - 16:35
Status:active» fixed

Fixed in in abrowser_33.0+build2-0ubuntu0.14.04.1+7.0trisquel32 and abrowser_33.0+build2-0ubuntu0.12.04.1+6.0.1trisquel32

Sun, 10/26/2014 - 03:58

Nice! The good thing about your fix is that we probably don't have to do anything about the Adobe DRM crap that will be introduced in a later version.

Sun, 11/09/2014 - 04:00
Status:fixed» closed

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.