1490631 - Unwanted/unexpected "extension installed by 3rd party software" warning

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Enterprise Policies, defect, P3)

Description

[Konrad]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/68.0.3440.106 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Install a webextension programmatically (as system service):
1. using Windows registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software[Wow6432Node\]\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions)
2. using GPO settings ("Extensions to install" plus "Prevent extensions from being disabled or removed")

Explanation: our software running as a system service must support firefox versions older than 60, thus we are required to install the extension via registry. We want however to avoid a warning displayed to the user that 3rd party software installed an extension, so we added the GPO settings.


Actual results:

If you register an extension via both registry and GPO, the GPO settings are apparently ignored and the warning is shown. Therefore the GPO setting "Prevent extensions..." is useless. How can you prevent extension from disabling if it is not yet enabled by the user?


Expected results:

Registry settings should be ignored if GPO settings are set (for the same extension identifier)

Comment 1

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

The "Prevent extensions from being disabled or removed" GPO setting is meant to target only the end user from performing these actions. It doesn't block other forms of installing extensions that an administrator has access to (such as the registry).


Could you have two different versions of this extension, and make the maxVersion of the one from the registry to be 59.*?  That way, Firefox >= 60 won't attempt to install it and I imagine the error will be avoided.

Comment 2

[Konrad]

(In reply to :Felipe Gomes (needinfo me!) from comment #1)
> The "Prevent extensions from being disabled or removed" GPO setting is meant
> to target only the end user from performing these actions. It doesn't block
> other forms of installing extensions that an administrator has access to
> (such as the registry).
> 
> 
> Could you have two different versions of this extension, and make the
> maxVersion of the one from the registry to be 59.*?  That way, Firefox >= 60
> won't attempt to install it and I imagine the error will be avoided.

Perhaps I was not clear enough. If I install the web extension using only GPO (setting up both "Extensions to install" and "Prevent extensions from being disabled or removed"), everything is OK. Firefox loads the extension and doesn't allow to disable it nor remove.

However if I additionally install the same extension (same ID) via Registry, Firefox displays a warning that 3rd party software installed the extension.

Taking at account the "Prevent extensions..." setting, I just thought it is actually an invalid behavior (why ask for consent if admin requires that the extension is loaded unconditionally) and therefore I decided to inform you about it. If this is not a bug (or problem) from your point of view, please close this incident.

Thank you for the tip with maxVersion, didn't know about it, although I've already made a decision to just not use the GPO settings and stay with installation via registry.

Comment 3

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Thank you for the report. We don't consider this a bug.

Installing addons via the registry is independent of the GPO.

Comment 4

[Konrad]

(In reply to Mike Kaply [:mkaply] from comment #3)
> Thank you for the report. We don't consider this a bug.
> 
> Installing addons via the registry is independent of the GPO.

Thank you for your response. I understand. So I resolve this bug as invalid (according to your answer).