KB40566 - Impact of Mozilla Firefox 52.x NPAPI based plug-in deprecation

This article describes the impact and the workaround for installing and launching Pulse Secure components from Mozilla Firefox 52.x browser which has disabled support for NPAPI plugins.

When logging in from a Mozilla Firefox 52.x browser on a supported Windows OS or macOS client, Pulse Secure products use a Java applet to install client components (for PCS 8.1RX and prior) such as the Pulse Secure Desktop Client, Network Connect, Windows Terminal Services, etc. In 8.2RX and above, Pulse Secure products had introduced Pulse Secure Application Launcher (PSAL) as an alternative to Java for deploying Pulse Secure components.  As of today, Java Secure Application Manager (JSAM) and Premier Java RDP Applet remain the last components to leverage Java in 8.2RX.

Mozilla announced that on March 2017 support for NPAPI will be disabled by default in Firefox 52.X. Refer to this link for more details: https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Problems-with-add-ons-plugins-or/Why-do-Java-Silverlight-Adobe-Acrobat-and-other-plugins-no/ta-p/31069

What is the impact of this on Pulse Secure Products?
Once NPAPI plugins are disabled, end-users will not be able to install or launch Pulse Secure components from Mozilla Firefox 52.X and above.

What is the actual end-user experience? 
The client install and/or launch process will not complete. The end-user experience will be similar to what it is when Java is not enabled on Firefox.

For customer who do not utilize Java Secure Application Manager (JSAM) or Premier Java RDP applet, it is recommended to upgrade to the latest 8.2 release.

For customer who do utilize JSAM or Premier Java RDP applet, please use the following workaround :

• For 32-bit version of Firefox, end users can download and install Firefox 52.X Extended Support Release (ESR) at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/.  Mozilla has stated Java support will remain until March 2018
• Use an alternative browser (like Safari or Internet Explorer) to launch Pulse Secure components which still support Java NPAPI plugin
• Use Pulse Client L3 VPN for MAC OS and Pulse client WSAM or L3 VPN on Windows by launching Pulse client directly if using JSAM.