427830 - alert boxes take over entire browser experience, can be exploited

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 61098

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[dpk]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008032619 Firefox/3.0b5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008032619 Firefox/3.0b5

It's possible to prevent a user from being able to easily close a tab by using alert boxes. It basically takes over the browser, from a "user experience" standpoint, requiring either fast reflexes or the user to kill the browser manually. It's much more likely that the average user will resort to the latter.

You can see the problem at http:// www dot internetisseriousbusiness dot com . If you go to the site, and try to close the window or tab, you'll be hit with a series of alert boxes with the lyrics to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." I don't recommend going there unless you're trying to confirm the bug or come up with a patch to fix it.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to the internet is serious business site with Javascript enabled.
Actual Results:  
Dozens if not hundreds of alert boxes (I didn't count) prevent you from actually closing the tab, unless you're really quick about it.

Expected Results:  
It would be nice if there was a way to disable Javascript right there in the alert box, to let the user break out of a bad situation.

I am guessing, due to the nature of the site, that this bug affects Firefox 2 and earlier, as well as the Firefox 3 beta. If it only affected the beta, it wouldn't have the intended effect on the majority of web users.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Is there somewhere a discussion about this that we got 5 bug reports in the last 2 days from reporter who failed to search ?