5 ms·

Not saying that their current actions are wrong, just that the optics of it are terrible for them. There was a chain of bad decisions that led them here though

Not saying that their current actions are wrong, just that the optics of it are terrible for them. There was a chain of bad decisions that led them here though: 1) thinking it's ok to disable software after its installed (using cert expiration -- I'm ok if the cert was revoked but that's a totally different discussion), 2) Taking more control of people's local software than many people are comfortable with, especially considering that their main market is tech savvy people that tend to be more sensitive to this than most 3) Making some of these things opt-out rather than opt-in, giving the perception that they may value data collection and control more than their users privacy.

Vinnl 8y ago
> their main market is tech savvy people that tend to be more sensitive to this than most Is that so, though? Firefox is still being used by millions of users, and I doubt those are only the tech savvy internet users. (Then again, this mostly applies to Firefox users using add-ons, which probably has a higher share of technical users.)
- yawaramin 8y ago
  One of their biggest 'selling points' is that they protect your privacy. It's really, really off brand for them to be distributing a critical bugfix through a telemetry collection channel.
  - DoctorOetker 8y ago
    it does feel like the normalization of deviance it's also entirely predictable that a non-negligable fraction of users -after enabling studies and verifying everything works again- will ... simply go on with their lives and forget about disabling studies... I also don't understand why the certificate graph is not exposed through a user interface, so that the user can add and remove certificates, or enable and disable certificates at their own discretion. This should have been obvious when the certified add-ons were introduced. Then all they would have to do is host the certificate file on their own domain and everyone could follow the simple steps in the GUI to replace the expired certificate...
- overgard 8y ago
  I might be wrong, I don't have data, but, as far as I can tell most users either use the installed browser or chrome (or whatever their tech savvy friends/relatives install for them).
mmsimanga 8y ago
Being a former ops guy the items you list resonate with me. On the one hand I do feel for the developers and hope they come up with a fix soon. On the other side, this is frustrating and there were some bad decisions made that a typical ops person would have pointed out and been ignored. The ignoring of ops guys until something breaks is something that has been consistent in my experience. Anyway for the sake of having an alternative to Chrome I hope they fix this yesterday.
Yoric 8y ago
For what it's worth, the (initial) mechanism for disabling add-ons (your 1) has been present since before Firefox 1.0. It was designed to quickly deactivate any malicious add-on as soon as it was detected, before it had a chance to do too much damage. In my books, that's a good thing. Here, the mechanism that kicked in was the protection against add-ons that could have been signed with stolen credentials, which would make them clearly malicious. Of course, it turns out that the problem was an expired cert, so a bug/human error. But generally speaking, I think that 1 is good.
- zaat 8y ago
  > It was designed to quickly deactivate any malicious add-on as soon as it was detected, before it had a chance to do too much damage. In my books, that's a good thing. I hate this attitude from security people so much. If for the sake of fighting malicious code you are crippling the software usability or my user experience, you are the malicious code.
  - lilyball 8y ago
    I hate that attitude from entitled users so much. If you don't want security, you're welcome to have a malware-ridden system, but don't think that this means all users should have to put up with malware-ridden systems.
    - zaat 8y ago
      I wish that was true, but in fact I have no way to disable this and similiar amazing security entrenchments. The monthly device bricking windows updates, for instance. If I can't do anything with my hardened computer, I don't care if is eaten alive by malware, it is useless anyways. At work, as the guy who have to fight on behalf of the sysadmins and the users dozens of clueless security advisors who are hardening everything according to security best-practices written by similarily clueless experts, I'm seriously astonished by the common backward thinking. If you are blocking access to all users pdf files, for an instance, you are the malware, you are causing disturbance to the business operation and annoying everyone.
httpsterio 8y ago
What does optics mean in this context?
- overgard 8y ago
  Public perception. For instance, one of the first comments on their post is this: > Why not just post a link to the fix that can be installed WITHOUT enabling Studies? This sounds like a clever plan to get more people to share their data via Studies… I definitely don't agree with that guy, and I doubt that's a majority opinion, but asking people to use a workaround that benefits them (Mozilla) after they broke things for a lot of people is bad publicity for sure. For what it's worth I think Mozilla is doing the right thing here, just it's not going to make them look great.
jcranmer 8y ago
> using cert expiration -- I'm ok if the cert was revoked but that's a totally different discussion CAs can delete certificates from their revocation lists after expiration, which means that you can't tell the difference between a certificate that was never revoked but merely expired and a revoked-and-then-expired certificate.
trashface 8y ago
As an alternative perspective, I'm totally fine with FF disabling the extensions when the cert went invalid, and I'm also happy that it auto-updated itself to fix the issue. To me the optics are pretty good: a mistake happened and they were able to recover pretty fast, and my browser wasn't exploited by bad actors in the meantime.
- lugg 8y ago
  > a mistake happened and they were able to recover pretty fast, and my browser wasn't exploited by bad actors in the meantime. To me adding a new plugin signing cert through a side loaded plugin is pretty much the definition of exploited. All this tells me is that their plugin signing solution is utterly worthless. The only way this should have been fixed was through official update channels.
tinus_hn 8y ago
The worst part is taking control because they think they know better than the user, and then messing up like this.

Vinnl 8y ago

> their main market is tech savvy people that tend to be more sensitive to this than most Is that so, though? Firefox is still being used by millions of users, and I doubt those are only the tech savvy internet users. (Then again, this mostly applies to Firefox users using add-ons, which probably has a higher share of technical users.)

yawaramin 8y ago
One of their biggest 'selling points' is that they protect your privacy. It's really, really off brand for them to be distributing a critical bugfix through a telemetry collection channel.
- DoctorOetker 8y ago
  it does feel like the normalization of deviance it's also entirely predictable that a non-negligable fraction of users -after enabling studies and verifying everything works again- will ... simply go on with their lives and forget about disabling studies... I also don't understand why the certificate graph is not exposed through a user interface, so that the user can add and remove certificates, or enable and disable certificates at their own discretion. This should have been obvious when the certified add-ons were introduced. Then all they would have to do is host the certificate file on their own domain and everyone could follow the simple steps in the GUI to replace the expired certificate...
overgard 8y ago
I might be wrong, I don't have data, but, as far as I can tell most users either use the installed browser or chrome (or whatever their tech savvy friends/relatives install for them).

mmsimanga 8y ago

Being a former ops guy the items you list resonate with me. On the one hand I do feel for the developers and hope they come up with a fix soon. On the other side, this is frustrating and there were some bad decisions made that a typical ops person would have pointed out and been ignored. The ignoring of ops guys until something breaks is something that has been consistent in my experience. Anyway for the sake of having an alternative to Chrome I hope they fix this yesterday.

Yoric 8y ago

For what it's worth, the (initial) mechanism for disabling add-ons (your 1) has been present since before Firefox 1.0. It was designed to quickly deactivate any malicious add-on as soon as it was detected, before it had a chance to do too much damage. In my books, that's a good thing. Here, the mechanism that kicked in was the protection against add-ons that could have been signed with stolen credentials, which would make them clearly malicious. Of course, it turns out that the problem was an expired cert, so a bug/human error. But generally speaking, I think that 1 is good.

zaat 8y ago
> It was designed to quickly deactivate any malicious add-on as soon as it was detected, before it had a chance to do too much damage. In my books, that's a good thing. I hate this attitude from security people so much. If for the sake of fighting malicious code you are crippling the software usability or my user experience, you are the malicious code.
- lilyball 8y ago
  I hate that attitude from entitled users so much. If you don't want security, you're welcome to have a malware-ridden system, but don't think that this means all users should have to put up with malware-ridden systems.
  - zaat 8y ago
    I wish that was true, but in fact I have no way to disable this and similiar amazing security entrenchments. The monthly device bricking windows updates, for instance. If I can't do anything with my hardened computer, I don't care if is eaten alive by malware, it is useless anyways. At work, as the guy who have to fight on behalf of the sysadmins and the users dozens of clueless security advisors who are hardening everything according to security best-practices written by similarily clueless experts, I'm seriously astonished by the common backward thinking. If you are blocking access to all users pdf files, for an instance, you are the malware, you are causing disturbance to the business operation and annoying everyone.

httpsterio 8y ago

What does optics mean in this context?

overgard 8y ago
Public perception. For instance, one of the first comments on their post is this: > Why not just post a link to the fix that can be installed WITHOUT enabling Studies? This sounds like a clever plan to get more people to share their data via Studies… I definitely don't agree with that guy, and I doubt that's a majority opinion, but asking people to use a workaround that benefits them (Mozilla) after they broke things for a lot of people is bad publicity for sure. For what it's worth I think Mozilla is doing the right thing here, just it's not going to make them look great.

jcranmer 8y ago

> using cert expiration -- I'm ok if the cert was revoked but that's a totally different discussion CAs can delete certificates from their revocation lists after expiration, which means that you can't tell the difference between a certificate that was never revoked but merely expired and a revoked-and-then-expired certificate.

trashface 8y ago

As an alternative perspective, I'm totally fine with FF disabling the extensions when the cert went invalid, and I'm also happy that it auto-updated itself to fix the issue. To me the optics are pretty good: a mistake happened and they were able to recover pretty fast, and my browser wasn't exploited by bad actors in the meantime.

lugg 8y ago
> a mistake happened and they were able to recover pretty fast, and my browser wasn't exploited by bad actors in the meantime. To me adding a new plugin signing cert through a side loaded plugin is pretty much the definition of exploited. All this tells me is that their plugin signing solution is utterly worthless. The only way this should have been fixed was through official update channels.

tinus_hn 8y ago

The worst part is taking control because they think they know better than the user, and then messing up like this.