314156 - Can't break out of hostile Javascript dialogues

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 123913

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Neil Harris]

Some websites feature Javascript which attempts to prevent the user from breaking out of a sequence of Javascript dialog boxes. This is typically done to condition the user to click "yes" over and over, so that when a software installation dialog pops up, the user will click "yes" to that to, thus installing malware.

When the dialog boxes are popped up, the main Firefox UI is inaccessible. If a user tries to get out of the dialog box by clicking on the close button on the dialog box, the script immediately pops up a new dialog box. The only way out of this is to kill Firefox externally, either from the command line (Linux) or the task manager (Windows). 

Steps to reproduce:
Visit a site that attempts to install malware. Observe the above.

What happens:
User can't break out of hostile Javascript program.

What should happen:
Javascript-generated dialog boxes should be modal only in regard to page content, not main Firefox UI controls, so the user can navigate away from the page, switch or close the tab, close the browser window, exit firefox etc.

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 123913 ***