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Participant
August 23, 2015
Answered

Multiple copies of FlashPlayerPlugin_18_0_0_232 running?

  • August 23, 2015
  • 1 reply
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I've found I have two copies of FlashPlayerPlugin_18_0_0_232.exe running?  I am running Windows 7 Home, Firefox 40.0.2 and one of the Adobe Flash Player 18.0 r0, is showing 11,020 K of memory with 171 handles and the other Adobe Flash Player 18.0 r0 is showing 3,324 K of memory with 162 handles.  Do I really need two of the flash Players running and if not, how do I delete the correct one?

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    Correct answer AadeshSingh

    HiPC_confused,

    This is expected.  You should see two Flash Player processes running in the task manager.  This is how Protected Mode in Firefox works.  One process is the broker, which is really small and is basically used to pass messages back and forth to the low-integrity Flash Player process.  The low-integrity process doesn't have permission to do much, but does all of the heavy lifting in terms of processing the content you see on the web.  If malicious content is able to crash and take control of the Flash Player process, it can't really do anything with it, because it's running with low permissions.

    You can read more about what Protected Mode is, and how it works here: Inside Flash Player Protected Mode for Firefox

    Regards,

    Aadesh

    1 reply

    AadeshSingh
    AadeshSinghCorrect answer
    Participating Frequently
    August 23, 2015

    HiPC_confused,

    This is expected.  You should see two Flash Player processes running in the task manager.  This is how Protected Mode in Firefox works.  One process is the broker, which is really small and is basically used to pass messages back and forth to the low-integrity Flash Player process.  The low-integrity process doesn't have permission to do much, but does all of the heavy lifting in terms of processing the content you see on the web.  If malicious content is able to crash and take control of the Flash Player process, it can't really do anything with it, because it's running with low permissions.

    You can read more about what Protected Mode is, and how it works here: Inside Flash Player Protected Mode for Firefox

    Regards,

    Aadesh

    Participant
    August 24, 2015

    Thank you Aadesh for your quick reply and answer to my question.  This is the first time I noticed the two processes running at the same time.  I've also noticed a Windows host process is also running two processes, I guess they are using the same security precautions.