939931 - Claims that a file from reputable company comes form a potentially unsafe location.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[ThomasH]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/17.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20131113153432

Steps to reproduce:

Go to HP Laptop page and select one of the listed laptops "Download the Datasheet."
For example: 
http://h71016.www7.hp.com/dstore/html/pdfs/US_CA_English_215_G1_Notebook_data_sheet_Oct_2013.pdf


Actual results:

A yellow warning bar appear stating (I paraphrase): "Protected View, this file originated form an unsafe location." 


Expected results:

This is a trusted location. Such warning should not appear without a valid reason.

Comment 1

[Mihai Morar, (:MihaiMorar)]

The built-in Firefox PDF viewer was released only starting with Firefox 19. Unless you set the “pdfjs.disabled” option to false from about:config page in Firefox ESR 17.0.11, the PDF you were trying to view was opened using an add-on or plug-in.
(Viewing PDF files in Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/view-pdf-files-firefox-without-downloading-them)

I was unable to reproduce this issue under Windows 7 x64, using various product data-sheets (PDFs) from HP.com on the following Firefox builds:
- ESR 17.0.11 (BuildID: 20131113153432): Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/17.0, with “pdfjs.disabled” set to false
- Nightly 28.0a1 (BuildID: 20131120030202): Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:28.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/28.0.

Could you please let us know if you had “pdfjs.disabled” set to false or what add-on/plug-in did you have installed at the time of view?
(Using a PDF reader plugin: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/view-pdf-files-firefox-without-downloading-them#w_using-a-pdf-reader-plugin)

Comment 2

[ThomasH]

“pdfjs.disabled” is set to true. 
My add-ons are "no script" 2.6.8.5 and flashblock 1.5.17.

Comment 3

[ThomasH]

Actually in the Add-ons manager Extensions tab I see also a campus wide installation of some McAfee product with the name (typo possible, cut and paste does not work on this add-ons manager unfortunately):
IDS_SS_NAME IDS_SS_VERSION.

Comment 4

[ThomasH]

Attachment: Shows a typical case of the symptom: protected view.

This is a typical case, it repeats for every single URL really, at least once.

Comment 5

[Allan Gardner (:Mathnerd314)]

This appears to be due to Adobe Reader's protected view mode:
http://helpx.adobe.com/reader/using/protected-mode-windows.html#main-pars_header_0

Perhaps you could open Adobe Reader and follow the instructions in that link to turn protected view off?

Comment 6

[ThomasH]

Ok, good call!
It is indeed, yet again Adobe issue. 
Unfortunately this instructions sheet from Adobe is not quite sufficient (the options to switch this protected view off are grayed out, and the security mode resumes anew after every start), however this is now Adobe issue, and not Mozilla.