1403207 - Pop Ups Appeared on Relaunch despite Preference Settings

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[Tom Galvin]

Attachment: previous.js.formatted

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:55.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/55.0
Build ID: 20170816210634

Steps to reproduce:

My daughter was using Firefox on Ubuntu 16.04  for homework which involved researching a Pop Musician.
I used the computer afterwards. I  launched Firefox after a restart from hibernate.
Pop-ups are blocked in Firefox Preferences.
I was running Firefox without AdBlocker extensions.


Actual results:

Immediately after  the relaunch two pop-ups appeared in addition to the Firefox main window with her open tabs.
One of the pop-ups was for a gambling site. The other was a window with extremely graphic pornographic image.
Fortunately there were no children present when this occurred.



Expected results:

The only window that should have appeared is the firefox main window. 
No pop-ups should have appeared. We have spoken with our daughter and there was no undesired content when she was doing her homework.
Looking at the History `perfecttoolmedia` seems to be the source of the pop-ups. 
I am attaching the previous.js file to assist you - this file is for Mozillas use only - please do not put my previous.js in the open domain.
Given the nature of the content of the pop-ups and the nature of the searches undertaken prior to the incursion (pop musicians) this had the potential to expose minors to disturbing content.
Perfecttoolmedia is associated with malware, As I am using Ubuntu I assume I am relatively immune from operating system issues. 
There appears to be a vulnerability in firefox which means that pop-ups can appear on a subsequent launch after being exposed to "infected" websites.

Comment 1

[Hsin-Yi Tsai (she/her) [:hsinyi]]

Reading through the attachment, isPopup was set to true. I wonder if something went wrong when we restore sessions. Moving to Firefox:Session Restore component to see if we would get more ideas. Feel free to reset the module if my logic isn't right...

Comment 2

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

Well, I'm not able to see the attachment, due to security restrictions, so that's blocking me from taking a look. Ryan, what do I need to do to be able to see the attachment?

Comment 3

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

Thanks to Ryan I was able to take a look at the previous.js file and noticed that 'isPopup' is set _only_ for the set of closed windows, which are _never_ restored on startup, but they are restored when you select it from the list of 'Recently Closed Windows' or hit CTRL+SHIFT+N.
In other words: this is only possible through user action.

Additionally, I haven't seen reports like this anywhere else. If you can give me a reliable STR, please feel free to re-open this bug and I'll prepare a fix right away! But at the moment there is not enough info for me to dive deeper.