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Mozilla Firefox's extension store being flooded with malware

theregister.com

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Re: Mozilla Firefox's extension store being flooded with malware

#21

Post by firefax »

charcircuit wrote: post #5
Workaccount2 wrote: post #3

Firefox is down bad right now. I have used it steadily for 20 something years now, and the cracks are really apparent now. It's also likely that Google will be forced to stop giving Mozilla money for Firefox, leaving little hope for continued development. This might actually be the end of FF.

Firefox could enter a revenue share parternship with Bing, or another search engine. Or they could follow in Brave's (and Google's and Microsoft's) footsteps in creating a search engine in order to own such a lucrative advertising surface.

I'm surprised DuckDuckGo doesn't offer to sponsor them, but maybe they lack the income to make an offer comparable to Google?

Re: Mozilla Firefox's extension store being flooded with malware

#22

Post by 9cb14c1ec0 »

norenh wrote: post #12
Workaccount2 wrote: post #3

Firefox is down bad right now. I have used it steadily for 20 something years now, and the cracks are really apparent now. It's also likely that Google will be forced to stop giving Mozilla money for Firefox, leaving little hope for continued development. This might actually be the end of FF.

Could you name another browser with enough backing to be able to keep up? Besides Google Chrome (controlled and backed by the surveillance overlords) and Safari (Kept alive by Apple cultists) I see very few free alternatives that can stand on their own. The other options are various niche browsers that leech on one of these three that might have a few changes here and there but lacks the real capability to stand on t…

I'm hoping and praying for the Ladybird browser to succeed, as I despise the Mozilla organization (Firefox itself is ok, imo).

Re: Mozilla Firefox's extension store being flooded with malware

#24

Post by cosmic_cheese »

norenh wrote: post #12
Workaccount2 wrote: post #3

Firefox is down bad right now. I have used it steadily for 20 something years now, and the cracks are really apparent now. It's also likely that Google will be forced to stop giving Mozilla money for Firefox, leaving little hope for continued development. This might actually be the end of FF.

Could you name another browser with enough backing to be able to keep up? Besides Google Chrome (controlled and backed by the surveillance overlords) and Safari (Kept alive by Apple cultists) I see very few free alternatives that can stand on their own. The other options are various niche browsers that leech on one of these three that might have a few changes here and there but lacks the real capability to stand on t…

> Safari (Kept alive by Apple cultists)

It’s tangential, but another reason why Safari is popular with some is that it’s refreshingly unbranded by browser standards. It doesn’t try to stand out and realizes it’s just another tool among many on your device. If anybody wants to pry some market share away from Safari, designing a browser that just quietly does its job and blends in without any fuss (no bespoke UI or design language or any of that) would be a good bet.

Re: Mozilla Firefox's extension store being flooded with malware

#26

Post by godshatter »

vntok wrote: post #7
Workaccount2 wrote: post #3

Firefox is down bad right now. I have used it steadily for 20 something years now, and the cracks are really apparent now. It's also likely that Google will be forced to stop giving Mozilla money for Firefox, leaving little hope for continued development. This might actually be the end of FF.

Somewhat counterintuitively, Google being forced to stop giving Mozilla money is arguably the best single thing that can happen to the project right now.

I'd rather they wipe out the current executive structure and replace it with someone who will simply invest the money they get from Google and use the proceeds to fund just the browser. Later, when they've had a few years of Google adding to the principal they can afford to do some other things.

Re: Mozilla Firefox's extension store being flooded with malware

#27

Post by pogue »

With browser extensions becoming new attack vectors, we need some reliable way to determine if they're running suspicious or malicious code in them before they're able to deploy. It seems like not even Google can properly vet their extension before they're added to the extensions store.

The only way I've found to try and detect these as an end user is by using an extension called Under New Management [1], which attempts to alert you if a browser extension has changed ownership, at which point you can pretty much assume they've been compromised.

Other than that, I know of no way to attempt to detect these malicious and problematic extensions. If anyone has any suggestions, please share them.

[1] https://github.com/classvsoftware/under-new-management

Re: Mozilla Firefox's extension store being flooded with malware

#28

Post by Workaccount2 »

norenh wrote: post #12
Workaccount2 wrote: post #3

Firefox is down bad right now. I have used it steadily for 20 something years now, and the cracks are really apparent now. It's also likely that Google will be forced to stop giving Mozilla money for Firefox, leaving little hope for continued development. This might actually be the end of FF.

Could you name another browser with enough backing to be able to keep up? Besides Google Chrome (controlled and backed by the surveillance overlords) and Safari (Kept alive by Apple cultists) I see very few free alternatives that can stand on their own. The other options are various niche browsers that leech on one of these three that might have a few changes here and there but lacks the real capability to stand on t…

I was hoping someone else would.

I see support for firefox drying up as Mozilla just bleeds out.

Ladybird seems cool, but I also think a fully functional browser needs a revenue stream and dedicated full time paid developers.

Re: Mozilla Firefox's extension store being flooded with malware

#29

Post by OptionOfT »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #11
radiofreeeuropa wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been like that since before "AI" (before ChatGPT's big marketing break-out) Google's revenue is largely from promoting scams and tricking old people into clicking ads that look like normal search results. They're a total scumbag company, it's a sign of how broken consumer protection is that they've gotten away with it for years with no meaningful legal consequences. [EDIT] Downvotes are warranted, I missed the l…

It’s getting so much worse though. This post is from 2020[1], and it’s much worse now as google has removed the bold “Ads” word into a “sponsored” heading that is different across desktop and mobile and for the most part appears to be part of the list header rather than attached to any particular ad. Bing is 10 times worse. They intermix search results with ads, and the only indication is a small light-gray/white “WE…

Link that doesn't completely disable your browsing experience https://archive.ph/BDzTM

Re: Mozilla Firefox's extension store being flooded with malware

#30

Post by dwb »

norenh wrote: post #12
Workaccount2 wrote: post #3

Firefox is down bad right now. I have used it steadily for 20 something years now, and the cracks are really apparent now. It's also likely that Google will be forced to stop giving Mozilla money for Firefox, leaving little hope for continued development. This might actually be the end of FF.

Could you name another browser with enough backing to be able to keep up? Besides Google Chrome (controlled and backed by the surveillance overlords) and Safari (Kept alive by Apple cultists) I see very few free alternatives that can stand on their own. The other options are various niche browsers that leech on one of these three that might have a few changes here and there but lacks the real capability to stand on t…

> Safari (Kept alive by Apple cultists)

This is a very silly thing to say given the widespread popularity of Apple products. There’s plenty of valid criticisms of Apple, but it being a “cult” is just not a serious or mature argument.

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