1119941 - Test: disable Flash protected mode

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[Benjamin Smedberg]

The results of bug 1111791 indicate that Flash protected mode doubles or more the rate of Flash crashes and hangs for Firefox users. In order to validate that experiment against a larger audience and also get better crash-stats, we intend to disable protected mode by default up to beta.

Flash problems are one of the major reasons people are stopping using Firefox. This change is definitely trading off security for better functionality, which is a tough call, but it's something we're going to try on beta.

No decision has been made yet about rolling this out to release users.

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Attachment: bug1119941.diff

Comment 2

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Comment on attachment 8546843 [details] [diff] [review]
bug1119941.diff

Approval Request Comment for Firefox 36
[Risks and why]: Protected mode reduces the impact of other security exploits, but appears to cause a significant increase in crashes and hangs as well as general browser jank. This is a significant change that will require careful evaluation after it has been deployed to the beta audience.

Comment 3

[Johnathan Nightingale [:johnath]]

Comment on attachment 8546843 [details] [diff] [review]
bug1119941.diff

I'm marking this r+ based exclusively on the context I have, which is that Benjamin wants it clear that I agree to this test on beta, since there is an explicit trade-off between security and stability at play. I do agree to that on beta for the purposes of understanding how much this stability issue impacts our broader user base, however:

* I have not reviewed the code that uses this pref
* I have not tested this change
* I am explicitly *not* supporting this in release, at least not yet. This patch doesn't have a kill switch in it for exiting beta, but I trust Benjamin to be watching closely and to avoid accidental migration to release.

Comment 4

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

Comment on attachment 8546843 [details] [diff] [review]
bug1119941.diff

[Triage Comment]
after the merge day

Comment 5

[Benjamin Smedberg]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/7e0bcec5e4f5
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/rev/8b8a825927f1
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/e91fcba59c18

Sylvestre, should we file a separate bug to track that we still need to make a decision about this for FF36?

Comment 6

[Wes Kocher (:KWierso) (Not reading bugmail; email directly if needed)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/7e0bcec5e4f5

Comment 7

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

(In reply to Benjamin Smedberg  [:bsmedberg] from comment #5)
> Sylvestre, should we file a separate bug to track that we still need to make
> a decision about this for FF36?
I would prefer that yes. Thanks

Comment 8

[Benjamin Smedberg]

We're going to back this out at least for 36b1. Sylvestre says this should be backed out of the beta branch and GECKO360b1_2015011222_RELBRANCH.

Comment 9

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/521859f9eae2 (GECKO360b1_2015011222_RELBRANCH)
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/1d99e9a39847 (default)

Comment 10

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Comment on attachment 8546843 [details] [diff] [review]
bug1119941.diff

We've decided to deploy this along with bug 1125891 in beta 5, as a test, which will be backed out in beta 9 and will not ride to 36 release.

Comment 11

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/78a8db05e964

Comment 12

[[SV Manager] Florin Mezei, QA (:FlorinMezei)]

Exploratory testing was performed today to check Flash player compatibility, using Firefox 36 Beta 5 (BuildID=20150129200438), on: Windows Vista x86, Windows 7 x64, Ubuntu 14.04 x64, and Mac OS X 10.9.5. Testing revealed only one new issue, filed in bug 1127884 (not sure if in any way related to this).

Detailed test results are in: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/Fx36b5.

Comment 13

[Benjamin Smedberg]

To close the bugzilla loops, we disabled this on all channels in bug 1120993.