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You might have noticed that Firefox runs in a lot of messed up environments, where, for example, bad installers downloaded by the user have done many bad things

You might have noticed that Firefox runs in a lot of messed up environments, where, for example, bad installers downloaded by the user have done many bad things to the OS, including installing bogus hosts files which block known anti-virus and anti-malware websites. Firefox had a huge crackdown on malicious toolbars and extensions, and that was a good thing for most people. Do you have a clever suggestion for how Firefox might take your concept of trusting the OS and some administrator, which doesn't exist for most home users, and make it secure against malicious installers?

vetinari 8y ago
The fun with malware will only start, once it starts finding it's command and control centers using DNS-over-HTTPS to a shadow DNS served by botnet and you won't be able to filter out it's traffic.
kiriakasis 8y ago
Also as other have pointed out you can run you own TRR locally as a daemon and have it look to /etc/hosts
- vetinari 8y ago
  Yes, and configure each app on each computer separately, instead of DHCP or RA, and if you miss some app, it will masquerade it's resolving among the rest of https traffic. Great. That's progress /s.
watermelon0 8y ago
If malware can modify /etc/hosts, then it shouldn't have any problems modifying Firefox executable or, even easier, it's configuration.
- geofft 8y ago
  This is true, but most malware is neither high-effort nor high-quality. It's very easy to edit /etc/hosts. It's a lot harder to inject yourself into the binary in a way that works. It's harder still to inject yourself into the binary in a way that works if the binary is actively trying to not be injected into, or using some security-by-obscurity scheme for signing the config, or whatever. Yes, it's all running at the same privilege level (or lower) and the malware technically has the access, but it's not cost-effective to have battle-hardened automatic reverse-engineering tech built into your malware. Chrome in particular has a DLL blacklist that seems to work very well in practice: in theory, a DLL blacklist can't possibly work, but in practice, DLLs don't try hard enough to hide their existence from the blacklisting code. https://www.chromium.org/Home/third-party-developers#TOC-Google-Chrome-s-DLL-Blacklisting-Policy https://www.chromium.org/Home/third-party-developers#TOC-Goo...
  - crtasm 8y ago
    Yes but you don't need any of that in this case, Firefox's config files are easily editable to toggle am option like using DoH.

vetinari 8y ago

The fun with malware will only start, once it starts finding it's command and control centers using DNS-over-HTTPS to a shadow DNS served by botnet and you won't be able to filter out it's traffic.

kiriakasis 8y ago

Also as other have pointed out you can run you own TRR locally as a daemon and have it look to /etc/hosts

vetinari 8y ago
Yes, and configure each app on each computer separately, instead of DHCP or RA, and if you miss some app, it will masquerade it's resolving among the rest of https traffic. Great. That's progress /s.

watermelon0 8y ago

If malware can modify /etc/hosts, then it shouldn't have any problems modifying Firefox executable or, even easier, it's configuration.

geofft 8y ago
This is true, but most malware is neither high-effort nor high-quality. It's very easy to edit /etc/hosts. It's a lot harder to inject yourself into the binary in a way that works. It's harder still to inject yourself into the binary in a way that works if the binary is actively trying to not be injected into, or using some security-by-obscurity scheme for signing the config, or whatever. Yes, it's all running at the same privilege level (or lower) and the malware technically has the access, but it's not cost-effective to have battle-hardened automatic reverse-engineering tech built into your malware. Chrome in particular has a DLL blacklist that seems to work very well in practice: in theory, a DLL blacklist can't possibly work, but in practice, DLLs don't try hard enough to hide their existence from the blacklisting code. https://www.chromium.org/Home/third-party-developers#TOC-Google-Chrome-s-DLL-Blacklisting-Policy https://www.chromium.org/Home/third-party-developers#TOC-Goo...
- crtasm 8y ago
  Yes but you don't need any of that in this case, Firefox's config files are easily editable to toggle am option like using DoH.