322080 - (GhostInRags) Esource takes over the browser completly to the point of taking away all navigation controls and menus, rendering Firfox useless and needing to be removed.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Security, defect)

Description

[L. Correll]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

On both my and my girlfriends computers, I have had esource take over the browser. Upon opening the browser, the esource page comes up even though the options have the home set to the default location. On my computer, I deleted all cookies, certificates, private data and used both norton and system mechanic to check the registry and clean my system. So far so good. On my girlfriends computer, esource highjacked the browser completely, to the extent of removing all access to any Firefox controls- the broswer opened to esource's homepage, popped another one underneath in a seperate window, and provided no controls but maximize, minimize, and close. I had to fully delete all folders and registry items from firefox and mozilla and reload to repair. Just reinstalling Firefox did not cure the problem, which might mean that whatever they are using is one of the ugly tricks used in IE, which is why I switched to 'Fox in the first place. I didn't see any other occurances of this in your bug lists (not really a bug, maybe). Main sites I visit are slyck.com and the torrent links they provide. Hope this helps.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Turn on browser
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
Browser control taken over by an ad from esource.com.

Expected Results:  
Not get taken over by nasty websites.

I had different themes on both computers, mainly the same extensions- adblock and filterset active and flashblock on.

Comment 1

[Ben Fowler]

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20051208 Firefox/1.6a1

I appreciate that I use a malware-resisting OS, but I do assure you that infection
with spyware through Firefox is not really a recognised hazard on any platform.

Are you certain that esource.com is a recognised spyware? See
http://www.slyck.com/spyad.php and http://www.uncfsu.edu/itts/unsupported.htm .

It is possible, and even likely, that that you will find better help and
advice on the mozillazine forums.

Comment 2

[crf]

There are some controls for javascript in the content section of the firefox settingswhich you can enable/disable.

This may help with windows popping up. 

--

esource.com seems like a pretty normal website to me though. Nothing popped up when I went there. Maybe there is some other underlying problem with your case.

Comment 3

[L. Correll]

The website that takes over is esourcemedia.com, and it came into the browser through mybittorrent.com.

Comment 4

[Ben Fowler]

See http://www.esourcemedia.com/faq.html and 
http://www.geekvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=27430 .
I can't see anything relating to esourcemedia, mybittorrent.com and the
browser hijacking, but it is not really an area in which I have much
personal involvement. You will have to wait until someone who knows more
about it hapens along.

Comment 5

[chris hofmann]

I'm going to mark this as incomplete.  reopen if more information ever back available or incomplete doesn't sound right.