353638 - Each start of Firefox triggers many IE 'antivirus" popup shells

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Firefox :: Security, defect)

Description

[elizabeth whyley]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.5) Gecko/20060731 Firefox/1.5.0.5 Flock/0.7.4.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.5) Gecko/20060731 Firefox/1.5.0.5 Flock/0.7.4.1

Starting Firewfox triggers some malware that pops up many IE shell 'free scan for viruses' type adware. This is critical problem in that it has great potential for destroying the Firefox userbase.  It seems to be directed only to respond to an attempt to use firefox .. it does not happen with Flock, Opera. The popup's disguise themselves as probably being from Mircosoft and warn against continueing without clicking for a 'Free virus scan'

Btw, the #Firefox channel on irc.mozilla.org was totally unsupportive of solving this problem, appreciating in no way how important it is. In fact, they banned me for insisting that it is critical for the future of Firefox.  Malware directed to cause a particular competing product to function in undesired ways has the greatest potentila for adversely affecting a product's user base.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Click on Firefox desktop icon
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
a series of popup adware 

Expected Results:  
no popups

Seeral legal issues are related:  malicious destruction to Firefox functionality, eg

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

As discussed on IRC, if you have malware on your system then you need to use a malware cleaner to get rid of it. Since there is no suggestion here that firefox was the installation vector of the malware I don't believe that this is a valid firefox issue.

If Firefox were to start trying to solve problems related to malware already on your machine it would have to give up being a browser and become a full time AV tool with weekly updates. All Mozilla can do is ensure that AV vendors are on top of any particularly bad malware.

Incidentally I did not ban you for insisting how critical it was, I banned you for insulting everyone involved in the discussion and generally causing a nuisance of yourself.

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

Invalid: not a bug in Firefox, and not something Firefox can work around without becoming an operating system.

I suggest that you figure out how the malware became installed on your computer.  If you discover that it was able to install itself due to a bug in some program (Firefox, Windows, etc.), report it to the appropriate group.

Btw, the version of Flock you're using appears to be based on an old version of Firefox (missing several months of security updates).