Microsoft Stealth Add-on Introduces Vulnerability to Firefox

Back in August I mentioned that if you installed Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 then a .NET Framework Assistant Firefox add-on was silently installed as well.  At the time I thought it rather dubious that Microsoft should think it OK to install stuff into a rival's browser without any indication that this was happening.  Well, it looks as if those doubts were not unreasonable.  This afternoon I got the following pop-up message from Firefox:

It turns out that the Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant introduces a vulnerabilty into Firefox, and the Mozilla team have decided to disable it.  For more details see here and here.