4 ms·

So why are AMD, Intel, and Nvidia shipping improperly designed DLLs as part of their drivers? That's a larger red flag than anything involving Firefox. I know

So why are AMD, Intel, and Nvidia shipping improperly designed DLLs as part of their drivers? That's a larger red flag than anything involving Firefox. I know some people consider proper binary signing difficult on Windows and find the UAC prompts annoying, but those are multi-billion dollar companies, I'm pretty sure they can figure it out. If anything, Firefox shouldn't be the one doing this, Windows itself should be preventing loading of unsigned/improperly signed DLLs without a UAC prompt.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Dalewyn 3y ago
Windows already blocks installation and execution of drivers that aren't signed by Microsoft under their WHQL[1] program. You can turn the blocking off, but that's a deliberate choice made as a sysadmin or power user. Drivers from Intel/Nvidia/AMD are signed by Microsoft, WHQL certified, and are not part of Windows, so as far as Mozilla is concerned they are third-party drivers. [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/install/whql-release-signature https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/i...
- delfinom 3y ago
  WHQL isn't required btw, but Microsoft does require drivers to have a valid EV code signing cert to be loaded by the OS. WHQL is only required for distribution in Windows Update.
formerly_proven 3y ago
> So why are AMD, Intel, and Nvidia shipping improperly designed DLLs as part of their drivers? That's a larger red flag than anything involving Firefox. What do you mean by "improperly designed DLLs"? The presence of these is totally normal because most of the graphics drivers are implemented in user-mode and loaded into whatever process uses Direct3D or another graphics API. If you block these, you won't be able to use 3D APIs.
pjc50 3y ago
> why are AMD, Intel, and Nvidia shipping improperly designed DLLs as part of their drivers? Nvidia are notoriously .. not good, but a substantial part of the 3D API runs client-side userspace, and a substantial part of the huge NVIDIA "geforce experience" is a set of game-specific patches, because NVIDIA have their own opinions on how to optimise for framerate. It also provides a whole bunch of features! There's an entire overlay screen you can bring up with screenshot/video recording options, camera effects for screenshots, etc. (also top tip even if you don't have NVIDIA - try pressing Win-G in random applications to see if they count as "games" which will let you use the DirectX screen recorder provided by Windows) > Windows itself should be preventing loading of unsigned/improperly signed DLLs without a UAC prompt. That's the "UAP" model and its successor, which provide mobile-like actual app isolation. Otherwise you (or rather, processes running as your user account or above) can generally just inject at runtime any DLL into any process.
dncornholio 3y ago
Who says they are improperly designed? We don't even know what DLL's causes the crashes yet. Don't jump to conclusions.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> So why are AMD, Intel, and Nvidia shipping improperly designed DLLs as part of their drivers? It's part of their "value add" I guess. Nvidia drivers will literally patch video games behind the scenes. It's so insane I can't believe it even works.
- josefx 3y ago
  Games have a long history of being buggy messes and video card drivers have a long history of patching around those issues. Even Windows does, Microsoft actively checked if SimCity 2000 was running because without special treatment it would crash on newer Windows Versions due to an allocator bug.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Dalewyn 3y ago

Windows already blocks installation and execution of drivers that aren't signed by Microsoft under their WHQL[1] program. You can turn the blocking off, but that's a deliberate choice made as a sysadmin or power user. Drivers from Intel/Nvidia/AMD are signed by Microsoft, WHQL certified, and are not part of Windows, so as far as Mozilla is concerned they are third-party drivers. [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/install/whql-release-signature https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/i...

delfinom 3y ago
WHQL isn't required btw, but Microsoft does require drivers to have a valid EV code signing cert to be loaded by the OS. WHQL is only required for distribution in Windows Update.

formerly_proven 3y ago

> So why are AMD, Intel, and Nvidia shipping improperly designed DLLs as part of their drivers? That's a larger red flag than anything involving Firefox. What do you mean by "improperly designed DLLs"? The presence of these is totally normal because most of the graphics drivers are implemented in user-mode and loaded into whatever process uses Direct3D or another graphics API. If you block these, you won't be able to use 3D APIs.

pjc50 3y ago

> why are AMD, Intel, and Nvidia shipping improperly designed DLLs as part of their drivers? Nvidia are notoriously .. not good, but a substantial part of the 3D API runs client-side userspace, and a substantial part of the huge NVIDIA "geforce experience" is a set of game-specific patches, because NVIDIA have their own opinions on how to optimise for framerate. It also provides a whole bunch of features! There's an entire overlay screen you can bring up with screenshot/video recording options, camera effects for screenshots, etc. (also top tip even if you don't have NVIDIA - try pressing Win-G in random applications to see if they count as "games" which will let you use the DirectX screen recorder provided by Windows) > Windows itself should be preventing loading of unsigned/improperly signed DLLs without a UAC prompt. That's the "UAP" model and its successor, which provide mobile-like actual app isolation. Otherwise you (or rather, processes running as your user account or above) can generally just inject at runtime any DLL into any process.

dncornholio 3y ago

Who says they are improperly designed? We don't even know what DLL's causes the crashes yet. Don't jump to conclusions.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> So why are AMD, Intel, and Nvidia shipping improperly designed DLLs as part of their drivers? It's part of their "value add" I guess. Nvidia drivers will literally patch video games behind the scenes. It's so insane I can't believe it even works.

josefx 3y ago
Games have a long history of being buggy messes and video card drivers have a long history of patching around those issues. Even Windows does, Microsoft actively checked if SimCity 2000 was running because without special treatment it would crash on newer Windows Versions due to an allocator bug.