1646504 - Firefox accepts domains with parenthesis

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1398567

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[David Randall]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:77.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/77.0

Steps to reproduce:

I tried searching for Rex spelled (R)?ex in the URL. I clicked in the URL, typed (r)?ex and hit <enter>. Firefox's autocomplete had
http://(r)/?ex
in the dropdown and when I hit <enter>, Firefox brought me to
http://www.(r).com/?ex
which is not a valid domain.

Actual results:

Firefox tries to load an invalid domain: www.(r).com

Additionally, if I create a web page with http://()/, Firefox will attempt to visit the site http://www.().com/

If I create markdown with (r), it's translated into the registered trademark symbol and Firefox translates the URL into punycode: http://xn--lba/

Expected results:

Firefox should adhere to the standard for domain names which I believe is RFC 1035. If the characters entered is not a valid domain name, Firefox should not attempt to resolve the name and visit the site. I believe Firefox should check for invalid domains when characters are entered in the address bar and when visiting links.

This affects Firefox on the desktop only. Firefox Focus 8.4.0, Firefox 68.9.0 and Firefox Beta 77.0.0 (all on Android) do not have this problem.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

This should be fixed in Firefox 78, at least the part where you type "(r)?ex". if you explicitly type the protocol, then I'm not sure what we should do.