674464 - Flag changes to currentEngine and defaultEngine in nsIBrowserSearchService

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Developer Pages, defect, P3)

Description

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Add-ons are not allowed to change the default or active search engine without user consent, but as doing so can be a significant revenue source, a lot of add-ons try it. As the change is easy to overlook, it would be nice to have it flagged. I'd settle for marking the properties dangerous, though I'd really prefer to only flag assignments (which I don't think we have infrastructure for yet).

Comment 1

[Matt Basta [:basta]]

Fortunately, we have the "overwritable" property. I might need to make some tweaks, but it will effectively let the validator generate "Global Overwrite" warnings when currentEngine/defaultEngine are assigned a value. It's not a great solution, but it should at least provide some level of alert.

Comment 2

[Matt Basta [:basta]]

Done

https://github.com/mozilla/amo-validator/pull/106

Comment 3

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

FWIW, .defaultEngine is readonly, so it can't be usefully set from JS anyways.

Comment 4

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

Reclassifying editor bugs and changing to a new whiteboard flag. Spam, spam, spam, spam...