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Firefox Disables Microsoft .NET Addon

Posted by kdawson on from the with-their-consent-of-course dept.

ZosX writes "Around 11:45 PM Friday night, I was prompted by Firefox that it had disabled the addons that Microsoft has been including with .NET — specifically, the .NET Framework Assistant and the Windows Presentation Foundation. The popup announcing this said that the 'following addons have been known to cause stability or security issues with Firefox.' Thanks, Mozilla team, for hitting the kill switch and hopefully this will get Microsoft to release a patch sooner." Here's the Mozilla security blog entry announcing the block, which Mozilla implemented via its blocklisting mechanism.

5 of 448 comments (clear)

  1. How about just disabling Microsoft? by John+Hasler · · Score: 0, Troll

    Much more effective.

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    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    1. Re:How about just disabling Microsoft? by AvalancheBurn · · Score: 0, Troll

      Yes, except that most of the world is using M$ as their OS. They still have the largest market share on computers, especially in the US. Though I am still confused as to why M$ would need to have an addon for Firefox. Doesn't it seem a little odd that the company that is competing for market shares in the web browser area would create a addon for a competing company?

    2. Re:How about just disabling Microsoft? by AvalancheBurn · · Score: 0, Troll

      Your argument is the same as "Post Hoc ergo propter hoc". You say that just because one can that other's can, which isn't always true. Now I do not use M$ software myself because I find there to be problems that should be fixed, but there are a lot of people who just have neither the time to deal with linux nor do they have the technical experience. Yes, there have been advances especially with Ubuntu but the problem is that there is still not enough safety measures in place to make it user proof.

    3. Re:How about just disabling Microsoft? by AvalancheBurn · · Score: 0, Troll

      Not saying it's user proof, but the concept of it is easier to understand for the average user. In a linux os there is a lot more available to the user but the problem is that because of that there is also more ways to cause accidental harm. The problem is the with Mac OS X you have almost no real power when it comes to what you can do with the system besides what the creators wanted and in linux you have too much. Windows is far from perfect and in fact I hate it most of the time. The point is that for the average user windows provides a system where there is still the ability to have some control but at the same time there are safety rails.

  2. Inconsistent logic by lseltzer · · Score: 0, Troll

    Microsoft says that the MS09-054 patch fixes the issue through all possible vectors, so the add-on is not a vulnerability on patched systems. Yet Firefox is blocking all versions of the add-ons. Why?

    If it's to block potential future vulnerabilities then they should block all add-ons, because they all have potential future vulnerabilities.

    If it's because some users may not update their systems then they should block all add-ons (especially Flash and Acrobat) because lots of add-ons have old vulnerabilities.

    If it's just to stick it to Microsoft for the inconsiderate way they in which they delivered these add-ons then they should say so. I doubt Microsoft agreed to this, as Mozilla implies in their blog.