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Comment by felixfbecker | Hacker News Reader

I think Firefox needs to stop this add-on signing and review madness. The web is OPEN. It's not a walled-garden Apple App Store. Yes, extensions run arbitrary JavaScript code. So does any webpage you go to, and nobody from Mozilla reviewed all that JavaScript either. How are extensions any different? Chrome is doing just fine without all this non-sense process and policy.

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Extensions have dramatically more access to powerful APIs to affect the browser. They can be used to perform a great variety of annoying, intrusive or downright malicious actions which a website is incapable of. Of course they have much more stringent policy.

Chrome implements mandatory addon signatures as well, and only Google can sign them.

I doubt google has certificates that run out automatically. Rather, the best way is with each signing to include signing the date and not allow the certificate to expire retroactively.

All signing certificates expire. They must. It's a fundamental part of the security model, because otherwise a malicious actor could take an old, comprimised cert and inject it into Firefox, allowing them to run malicious 'signed' addons. This attack would work the exact same way in Chrome, so Chrome will expire it's certificates too.

Thanks for the explanation. Can you provide me with a link to learn more about how google manages extension certs? I am interested in learning how their system differs from Firefox, if at all.

> All signing certificates expire. They must. It's a fundamental part of the security model

Is it really necessary? Aren't there other possible ways of invalidating a certificate other than its date?

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