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These plugins have been installed by something running with root-level privileges on that machine. It's pretty hard to protect against that since it could (theo

These plugins have been installed by something running with root-level privileges on that machine. It's pretty hard to protect against that since it could (theoretically) replace firefox.exe entirely. There are things you could do but it'd turn into a ridiculous arms race; it would be much easier if these companies just stopped doing it.

mishmash 16y ago
Why couldn't they store a hash of the plugins of a given profile on the server, and check that at startup? It wouldn't be much different than their already existing malware checks.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  Don't they already do this though? Pop up a window that tells you if new addons have been installed?
- aboodman 16y ago
  This would work reasonably well. It is still circumventable by "attackers" (eg by replacing or patching firefox.exe, modifying /etc/hosts, etc), but the bar is higher. On the other hand, it also requires Mozilla running and maintaining a service, which is a pretty resource intensive solution for such a minor feature. Also some users do not like their browsers phoning home for any reason whatsoever, so they would want a way to disable the feature. Of course, once there's a disable switch, attackers can flip it as easily as users.
roadnottaken 16y ago
Do unix-style software repositories solve this problem? I mean, is there anything preventing package updates from modifying other parts of the OS as part of an update?
- archangel_one 16y ago
  The system I'm most familiar with is Gentoo's Portage; that implements file collision checks so packages can't straight-up modify existing bits of the system, but often plugins are separate packages which executables enumerate somehow so this kind of thing certainly could be done. I assume apt and other things would be fairly similar. I suspect the biggest advantage there (which isn't fundamentally to do with the repo system) is that you can complain to Ubuntu or whoever and they're rather more likely to put a stop to something like this than Microsoft or Apple are.
- astine 16y ago
  In practice, there is nothing you can really do to prevent software running as root from installing whatever it wants. If you are going to install software using a company's installer, you'd better trust that company. Linux and BSD package managers can avoid this issue by replacing the original installer completely, but often times a package is just a thin wrapper around the company's own installer, in which case the problem is doubly hidden.

mishmash 16y ago

Why couldn't they store a hash of the plugins of a given profile on the server, and check that at startup? It wouldn't be much different than their already existing malware checks.

jasonlotito 16y ago
Don't they already do this though? Pop up a window that tells you if new addons have been installed?
aboodman 16y ago
This would work reasonably well. It is still circumventable by "attackers" (eg by replacing or patching firefox.exe, modifying /etc/hosts, etc), but the bar is higher. On the other hand, it also requires Mozilla running and maintaining a service, which is a pretty resource intensive solution for such a minor feature. Also some users do not like their browsers phoning home for any reason whatsoever, so they would want a way to disable the feature. Of course, once there's a disable switch, attackers can flip it as easily as users.

roadnottaken 16y ago

Do unix-style software repositories solve this problem? I mean, is there anything preventing package updates from modifying other parts of the OS as part of an update?

archangel_one 16y ago
The system I'm most familiar with is Gentoo's Portage; that implements file collision checks so packages can't straight-up modify existing bits of the system, but often plugins are separate packages which executables enumerate somehow so this kind of thing certainly could be done. I assume apt and other things would be fairly similar. I suspect the biggest advantage there (which isn't fundamentally to do with the repo system) is that you can complain to Ubuntu or whoever and they're rather more likely to put a stop to something like this than Microsoft or Apple are.
astine 16y ago
In practice, there is nothing you can really do to prevent software running as root from installing whatever it wants. If you are going to install software using a company's installer, you'd better trust that company. Linux and BSD package managers can avoid this issue by replacing the original installer completely, but often times a package is just a thin wrapper around the company's own installer, in which case the problem is doubly hidden.