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Mozilla Bans Popular Firefox Add-On That Tampered With Security Settings (softpedia.com)

Posted by timothy on from the you-crossed-the-line-but-then-erased-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla has banned the popular (250,000+ installs) YouTube Unblock add-on that allowed users to view YouTube clips blocked in their country. The reason for this move is because the add-on was caught disabling a Firefox security setting (code signing) which the allowed it to silent-install another add-on, which Avast (antivirus software) was detecting as malware. Earlier in 2015, the same plugin was again caught cheating when it was using an self-contained update system that was bypassing Mozilla's add-on review process.

8 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Let THE USER Decide by Kremmy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What, are you a malware author or something? Remove this backdoor garbage from official add-on repositories.

  2. Security design-flaw in Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It should not have been possible that an add-on can change security settings to begin with.

    1. Re:Security design-flaw in Firefox by bloodhawk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Then the user should be asked and CONSENT to changing the security setting. Allowing any addon to do this without the users knowledge is most definitely a design flaw.

  3. Re: Let THE USER Decide by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    "The add-on remains available through its homepage."
    The user still can decide. Mozilla only removed it from their add-on marketplace, which is IMO the correct action and certainly not any kind of overreach. That's like saying Google is wrong for banning Android apps from the Play Store which root your phone - it's not, they have policies and those apps knowingly violated them; if you still want those apps side loading is available.

  4. Re:Let THE USER Decide by William+Baric · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I agree, remove this backdoor garbage from OFFICIAL add-on repositories, but still allow me to install whatever the fuck I want. I'm seriously tired of how arrogant Mozilla developers have become.

  5. Re: Let THE USER Decide by bickerdyke · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The user CAN NOT decide if the probably unwanted stuff is slipped to him secretly.

    It would be different if the user was warned during plugin installation "Hey, we're going to mess with your browser security setting and will install stuff that would trigger your virus alert, but - just to avoid that confusion - we will disable your antivirus while we're at it. OK?"

    THAT would be "let the user decide".

    --
    bickerdyke
  6. Re:other browsers with Firefox-like add-ons by arth1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Or you could just install Classic Theme Restorer, since palemoon isn't 100% compatible with firefox addons and made by amateurs.

    From a security point of view, Palemoon failed even at step one, installation. Its Linux installer *requires* that the system is set up for gratuitous sudo. Anything that asks for a system password during installation is something I will not install. And a system password that for an account that is set up to have root access for any command when the account password is given? No, just no.

    (And never mind that they can't be bothered to list the prerequisites either.)

  7. Re:other browsers with Firefox-like add-ons by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It really is too bad that Windows doesn't really have a concept of an /opt directory or installing to user folders.

    It does.

    Programs that aren't written by morons should ask you if you want to install it for the current user only (no UAC required) or for the whole system (UAC required).

    For the user, HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software in the registry is like the opt directory.
    But so is %USERPROFILE%\AppData\. And in AppData you have Local, LocalLow, and Roaming.

    The %APPDATA% variable points to Roaming by default, while the Local directory is for shit specific to the PC (shouldn't roam), or is too big to roam. LocalLow is a "low integrity" directory. Allegedly things like plugins and add-ons should store their shit there and not be able to write to the Local directory.

    For the system, you have HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and %ProgramData%.

    The problems are:

    1 - Morons write programs and demand full access to the whole system regardless of whether or not they need it.

    2 - Morons write programs and store a whole mess of bizarre, indecipherable shit in the registry, in both HKLM and HKCU. Even when it's documented, it's fucking wrong (I'm looking at you, Adobe).

    3 - Morons write programs and store a whole mess of bizarre, indecipherable shit in the the various %USERPROFILE%\AppData\ folders and the %ProgramData% folder .

    4 - Morons write programs and store even more configs in the program's installation folder or other random places (like the Documents library).

    Any one of these things alone is annoying, but programs often do all 4. This makes figuring out configs even harder - does the registry override settings.ini in the program folder? Or perhaps the profile in %AppData% wins out. What about the settings in %ProgramData%? Which registry settings are in HKLM vs HKCU? Why isn't anything in %AppData% or %ProgramData% or even the fucking registry cleared out when I uninstall?

    It's a mess because developers are morons and Windows lets morons make a mess of things in several ways.