Add-Offs

[stoutfellow]

I am well and truly pissed at Firefox this morning. I don't have many add-ons, but the ones I have are either important or very useful. The add-on glitch they're dealing with has disabled both of my ad blockers, two of my security add-ons, and my feed reader. The "studies" link says it's already run on my computer, but the add-ons are still hors de combat.

Six hours, they say. OK, I'll give them until 10:30 before I start screaming.

Comments

[graydon]

It's not, strictly, a glitch; it's a bug in the security of the update system.

Firefox turned it off because otherwise the update system could be used to completely own -- totally circumventing all of the core update security mechanisms -- your firefox install. (Firefox is effectively an operating system. This is the bad side of that.) This has been an increasing problem with all browsers; malevolent actors push a browser version they own via the update, and from the user perspective neither you nor your anti-virus can tell. It's a browser application with automatic updates and security certificates and everything, just malicious ones.