310934 - When clicking certain ads in AOL Instant Messenger, Firefox opens a bunch of tabs, generates a bunch of weird errors, and doesn't display the correct webpage in any of the tabs.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 221445

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Bruce Pascoe]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7

A few ads displayed in the AOL Instant Messenger window cause Firefox to show
some odd behavior indeed.  When clicked, an ad may cause Firefox to get confused
(possibly due to the odd--but still valid--formation of the URL: it's a
doubleclick ad that caused it for me) and open multiple tabs, each displaying a
valid website (which has nothing to do with the ad) or, more often, a blank page.

Firefox can also generate errors along the lines of "unable to contact
<integer>" (replace <integer> with some random number) when this happens. One
error message is displayed for each tab that shows a blank page.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Click some ads in AOL Instant Messenger (easier to repreduce if done when
Firefox is closed)
2. Wait until an ad opens multiple tabs and you get a large number of "unable to
contact <some integer>" errors.
Actual Results:  
A large number of tabs opens, Firefox generates errors along the lines of
"unable to contact <some integer>" and every tab is either a blank, untitled
page or a website having nothing to do with the site requested.

Expected Results:  
The requested site should load, only causing Firefox to create one tab at most.

In most cases, I would have given such a bug a "normal" severity rating;
however, I rated it critical because it can cause the browser to open random
sites; it's very possible, then, that one of those sites would be malicious.

Comment 1

[Bruce Pascoe]

Attachment: Screenshot of the bug in action.

Comment 2

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

99% chance the URL has "|" in it, so this is bug 221445. If you can somehow
track down that it doesn't include pipe characters, don't hesitate to reopen.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 221445 ***