2015

Sneaky Adware

“The two PUPs are Shell&Services and Mintcast 3.0.1. These are browser add-ons for Firefox, Chrome, and IE, and are generally installed without the user’s consent, packaged with other software.“These two come with a newer variant of the Mintcast adware, which, besides injecting ads inside the user’s browser while navigating legitimate websites, also secretly turns off Safe Browsing support in Firefox. …” Source: SoftpediaMore  Adware Sneakily Turns Off Firefox Safe Browsing

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Thunderbird 38.5.0 Released

Mozilla released the next update to the Thunderbird 38 branch on December 23rd with Thunderbird 38.5 release. There were some minor fixes with this update: In the address book manager, make the contacts sidebar remember the last selected address book (1142705) Prepare to use SHA-256 signing certificate for Windows builds, to meet new signing requirement (1079858) Various security fixes Depending on their update settings, users will be prompted soon to update to the newest version of Thunderbird. Users may trigger the update from within Thunderbird via Help > About Thunderbird and following the prompts. Also, users can maually download and…

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The Return of KB3035583

Yes, the evil (Get Windows 10 aka GWX) KB3035583 update somehow installed itself this morning on my main Windows 8.1 machine. I was doing some housekeeping on my school Windows 7 laptop as I am between semesters right now. Thought it would be a good time to remove some unneeded programs (Oracle Virtual Box and Microsoft Project Professional) that I am not going to use and update Flash,  Java, Thunderbird and Firefox. While I was running Malware Bytes on the laptop I started checking for updates on my main machine. I did look at the updates that were available I was…

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HTML5 Netflix now supports Firefox

As we reported earlier, on December 17th NetFlix has started offering HTML5 videos for Firefox users. While this not a big deal for the Win32 users as they could still use Silverlight with Firefox, this is not the case for the Firefox Win64 users. The newly released Win64 Firefox browser does not support NPAPI plugins (except Flash). Note: Silverlight is planned on being supported with the upcoming Win64 version of Firefox 44. However, by the end of 2016 Mozilla plans on removing support for the very outdated NPAPI plugins (except Flash) from Win32 and Win64 versions of Firefox. Google Chrome ended support earlier this…

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Add-on Signing now Active in Firefox 43

One feature Mozilla, seems to have conveniently left out of the release notes for Firefox 43 is add-on/extension signing is now active and being enforced. Users can no longer install unsigned add-ons and there is no longer a mechanism to override this. Mozilla claims “(add-on signing) will make the block-list and other malware prevention measures more effective.”  

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Firefox 43.0.1 Released

Mozilla has released a minor update to the current Firefox 43 branch with Firefox 43.0.1 on December 18th. This is part 1 of 2 for the fix of Bug 1079858. This bug has to do with Microsoft deprecating the use of the SHA1 Authenicode signatures for Windows singing on January 1st, 2016. Mozilla is moving to use SHA2 signature algorithms and the purpose of this patch is to simply inform the updater and maintenance service of the new SHA2 certificate issuer. Part 2 which will be released with Firefox 43.0.2 likely in the next week will Use SHA-2 to sign Windows binaries, and…

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Firefox Users Can Now Watch Netflix HTML5 Video on Windows

“Netflix announced today that their HTML5 video player now supports Firefox on Windows Vista and later using Adobe’s new Primetime CDM (Content Decryption Module). This means Netflix fans can watch their favorite shows on Firefox without installing NPAPI plugins. …” Source: The Mozilla Blog Firefox Users Can Now Watch Netflix HTML5 Video on Windows

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Firefox 43 Released

Mozilla released the next major update for Firefox on December 15th with Firefox 43. New features in this release included: Private Browsing with Tracking Protection offers choice of blocking additional trackers Improved API support for m4v video playback Firefox 64-bit for Windows is now available via the Firefox download page Users can choose search suggestions from the Awesome Bar On-screen keyboard displayed on selecting input field on devices running Windows 8 or greater Firefox Health Report has switched to use the same data collection mechanism as telemetry There were some fixes and other items in this release which can be…

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Thunderbird is 11!

Back on December 7th, 2004, Mozilla announced the ‘birth’ of Thunderbird: MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – December 7, 2004 – The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet, today announced the worldwide availability of the Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 email client. Thunderbird focuses on new features and settings to help stop spam and prevent viruses, the two biggest problems facing email users today. Mozilla Thunderbird follows last month’s highly successful release of Mozilla Firefox 1.0 that has been downloaded by over nine million users.

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Modify Firefox settings on the Web

“Firefox Profilemaker is an online tool that enables you to make configuration changes to Firefox by exporting those changes either to a Firefox profile or saving them as a prefs.js file instead for existing profiles.“The idea is very similar to that of ConfigFox, a third-party program for Firefox that provides you with options to configure security, privacy and other Firefox settings which in turn is based on our privacy and security settings listing for the browser.“The online tool walks you through seven configuration pages, each listing a distinct set of features and options to either enable or disable it. …”…

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