1459451 - user interface improvement for malware download false positives

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1412567

(Firefox :: Downloads Panel, defect)

Description

[bugzilla2018]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:59.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/59.0
Build ID: 20180406121424

Steps to reproduce:

Right-Click on a link to a file that would normally be opened in an external application, e.g. an eBook in .epub format. I try to give an example link below.

Select Save-As to save this file on disk without opening it.

Firefox begins to download the file, but for downloads that are detected as malware by the browser, the download does not finish in normal fashion. 

When the Download is apparently finished, open the list of recent downloads with the Downloads Icon. The list shows this download with a "No Entry" traffic sign icon, the file name, and the text "This file contains a virus or malware".  On Mouse-Over, this text changes to "Show more information"

Click on the entry, and expect to see more information.

((To get an example link to such an ebook that wrongly classified as malware at the time of reporting: Download the open-sourced eBook "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" via http://libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=0FAC1755E3F1D75BF4C9D0FB0E2C98D0 -- clicking on the title will load another page with a time-limited download ling titled "GET", where you can do the Save-As)) 



Actual results:

After clicking on this entry in the Download list, the following text is displayed:

"This file contains a virus or malware. This file contains a virus or other malware that will harm your computer. You can search for an alternate download source or try again later." No more information is given, especially not what source of information was used to classify the file as malware.

Two buttons are displayed: "Open" and "Remove File". No button to finish the Download without opening the file is present.

Meanwhile, the download target directory contains a file with the name of the downloaded file with size 0 bytes. It is unclear where the downloaded data is actually stored.

It seems that it is not possible to download files, classified as malware by firefox, without also opening them, even though the "Save As" method was used to initiate the download.


Expected results:

Clicking on the entry should have given information why the file was classified as virus or malware: What source of information was used.

The user should at least be given the possibility to investigate the issue on her own: At minimum, a "Save file as" option should be present, that allows the user to finish the download without already opening the file in the external application. This should be enabled for the purpose of checking the file with local and online malware checking tools instead of either going full risk and opening the file with its default application, or deleting the file after a potentially long download that is wrongly classified as malware.