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Comment by mccr8 | Hacker News Reader

Firefox is changing this because malware injects itself into Firefox using this mechanism. Power users who really want to install unsigned addons can switch to the Developer Edition.

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I have cleaned my share of malware infections and I can't think of one were the attack vector seemed to be FF.

Now we seem to be nerfing the beast because someone might do stupid things.

I worked in university IT for a year, focused on student's personal machines. A good majority of malware we experienced installed extensions and reconfigured browser preferences.

I understand why Mozilla and Google have done similar things to restrict extension installation, but can't help but think there has to be a better way for users who know what they're doing.

You may not have seen one yourself, but browser vendors have data on this: there is a lot of malware out there that infects browsers.

Browsers are putting a lot of effort into preventing this, they wouldn't do it if they didn't have clear information showing the problem was serious.

I don't doubt that malware adds browser extensions, but is that the initial infection vector or just installed later after the malware is already in place?

the problem with that is the developer edition is also firefox nightly. Power users don't always want the absolute latest :-P

Developer Edition is different than Nightly. They both do update about once a day, but far fewer changes land on Developer Edition so it should be more stable.

Yes, I think it was formerly called "aurora".

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