A fix for disabled Firefox addons

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labbe5
Posts: 2159
Joined: Wed 13 Nov 2013, 14:26
Location: Canada

A fix for disabled Firefox addons

#1 Post by labbe5 »

https://www.addictivetips.com/web/fix-a ... iveTips%29

A permanent fix is under development by Mozilla.

A bug has affected add-ons in Firefox causing them to be disabled. The problem is being caused by security certificate expiring. This certificate is used to sign quite a few add-ons and since it has expired, the add-ons are being disabled. There are two fixes for the add-ons disabled in Firefox problem. A hotfix by Mozilla, and one that other Firefox users are suggesting. Both work, so take your pick.

Further reading :
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/s ... ed-addons/

anewuser
Posts: 93
Joined: Sun 05 Feb 2012, 20:00

Are legacy addons rendered useless ?

#2 Post by anewuser »

So legacy addons are effectively killed by this certificate "issue"?

I'm very skeptical but I think this was done on purpose. I keep asking how is it possible for such an oversight to occur in a organization with hundreds of engineers and money?

Of course old firefox editions have no support. But why are they offered as in then? say for instance I need to run firefox on a machine from 2010 and the only thing that runs well is firefox 36. Will addons for that version work? My guess is not.

Mozilla might as well delete the entire addons catalog, now.

I keep asking as well how many engineers do you need to screw up this way?
I honest reply I got was "One, if he is in the right place" which could be absolutely true.

Sure, mozilla is composed of humans, and their project is free as in free speech and free beer, and a long list of arguments not to bad mouth mozilla...

The oversight is rather suspicious.

Upgrading to firefox 66.0.4 is not at all possible for people with old, legacy systems. Yeah, I can already foresee people saying "buy a new machine otherwise you are going to hell and deserve to die, also your cat needs to die" simply becasue nowdays you must upgrade as soon as a company rolls their new update becasue otherwise omg security is at risk.

Are legacy addons effectively rendered useless for firefox older than when "studies enabled" was introduced?


/rant

dancytron
Posts: 1519
Joined: Wed 18 Jul 2012, 19:20

#3 Post by dancytron »

No, you are being paranoid, its obviously a screwup.

When they went to Quantum, they obsoleted a lot of addons. If they were going intentionally kill all addons, they would have done it then.

I did the histories thing and all my addons came right back. There is no way they intentionally disable them, have a hotfix to reenable them, and then take them away again after that.

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8Geee
Posts: 2181
Joined: Mon 12 May 2008, 11:29
Location: N.E. USA

#4 Post by 8Geee »

On may 20 my FF65.0.2 fell victim to this SNAFU.

I will pass my observation along that the browser still functions normally at first opening. However there is some timer involved that expires, and THEN the Add-ons get disabled. This was tested with a borqued browser, the full CD of the OS was installed again to a re-formated USB stick.

THIS TIME I immediately upgraded the browser to 66.0.5, and the addons did not fail. So I now have FF66.0.5 with previous addons from FF65.0.2 still functioning.

Of course when THIS cert expires all bets are off. This could be a stupid MOZ trick to force end-users into using specific add-ons. However, I do note that one of my add-ons was not to be found in the new add-on listing, yet loaded and still functions properly.

Regards
8Geee
Linux user #498913 "Some people need to reimagine their thinking."
"Zuckerberg: a large city inhabited by mentally challenged people."

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