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Microsoft Update Quietly Installs Firefox Extension
hemantm writes "A routine security update for a Microsoft Windows component installed on tens of millions of computers has quietly installed an extra add-on for an untold number of users surfing the Web with Mozilla's Firefox Web browser."
What, you think you know better than MICROSOFT what should be on your machine?
The new extension allows Firefox to experience the same rich vulnerabilities that IE users have come to expect!
Microsoft trying to take over the world by shady practices? Yeah, right...
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." --Mark Twain
Man, this is so unfair to us Ubuntu users
.xpi
Someone please send me the
Would everyone who voted this old news to the front page kindly line up...thank you.
*SLAP*
*SLAP*
*SLAP*
*SLAP*
(etc...)
Now, don't do it again!
I sure hope they come up with a way to run ActiveX in Firefox, I want seamless integration of my botnet...
Brett
New Slashdot rule, forget TFA, don't even read the discussion until the 2nd or 3rd time around
rape.
--Jimmy Carr (iirc)
I don't do windows updates. the last 'tinyXP' install was it and whatever came with it, came with it. period.
on WGA at all and - again - whatever level its at, its at.
BUT - no wga is a godsend and having a custom windows that is almost entirely crap-free (as much as we can make it) means we don't have to trust papa MS to give up new updates. the updates started being untrustworthy and doubtful a few years ago (around WGA time, really).
since the wga days, I stopped doing online updates and did only a 'walkaround cdrom' update. even that dried up so I had to stop that procedure.
if windows gets borked, I reinstall from that point again (or some backup). I do most of my 'dangerous' stuff on a vnc session with the real net i/o going on on linux and bsd (and opensolaris). the win box is just a vnc-viewier and not much else in a net work context (no local browsing, almost ever!).
this way, I really dont' CARE about this or that security update on windows. I avoid dangerous activity on windows and my win install never changes 'from under me' as it would during various windows updates from MS!
I prefer a slightly older system (of patches) on xp than trusting each new update.
I will trust 'apt-get update' on those boxes and I'll trust the solaris updates, but I will NOT TRUST MS binary updates! not anymore. I'd rather re-install if things go bad than trust their ever-infringing updates.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Sadly enough, Slashdot's search engine didn't find it but Google's did.
Hey, be fair. Slashdot has only had a search feature for about 10 years - it takes time to make these things useful.
And their development team (Sid) has been feverishly at work all those years in order to bring us world-beating innovations the giant green "Reply to This" and "Parent" buttons (we has such a hard time finding those links before the advent of those buttons) and features to break certain browsers. Add to that the Herculean efforts to change the wait between AC posts (the "Slow Down, Cowboy" feature) from 2 minutes to an amount of time generated by a random number generator and added to 2 hours while telling us things like "it has only been 96 days and 14 minutes since you your last post - you must wait at least 2 minutes before posting" and you can see that Sid (who does this in his spare time between grade-school classes) has had a pretty full plate.
Oh, and Sid has discovered girls, so his mind is elsewhere these days (he has to adapt - he never had exposure to girls while working for Slashdot).
So, a little less of the bitching, if you please.
The concept of "download and install an uninstaller to uninstall a program you never asked for but Windows allowed to be installed" seems very common on Windows. Just goes to show Windows is built for developers to exploit, rather than users to use. And people still call it a "personal" computer. I guess one more oximoron can't hurt.
New Slashdot rule, forget TFA, don't even read the discussion until the 2nd or 3rd time around
What do you mean, "new"?
Maybe now Firefox will now run in "IE" compatibility mode so I can "correct" all my CSS 2.0 compliant code to render correctly on Redmond's browser.
Obviously he didn't read the memo the first two times around.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Absolutely! Firefox, despite it's reputation, is *HIGHLY* unsecure!
I've easily demonstrated how It won't protect itself vs fdisk, format, or applying 220 volts directly to the harddrive!
Secure browser my ass...
"Windows 7 isn't done until Firefox won't run."
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.