Firefox tag

Mischa Spiegelmock and Andrew Wbeelsoi at a ToorCon conference (on hacking) had proclaimed that the Javascript in Firefox was a “complete mess,” and that there are several vulnerabilities, the worst of which causes a stack overflow and consequently code execution. (Stack overflow is where a program takes up more space than it had/been allocated in memory.) They also proclaimed that it could “never be patched.”

Mozilla had, of course, looked into this, and spoken to Mischa. There was a surprise though: he had never actually got the code to execute anything. It would merely cause a stack overflow… and crash.

As part of our talk we mentioned that there was a previously known Firefox vulnerability that could result in a stack overflow ending up in remote code execution. However, the code we presented did not in fact do this, and I personally have not gotten it to result in code execution, nor do I know of anyone who has.

So, it was also based on an old security flaw which was fixed previously.

• arsTechnica on the story.

So, was it just a prank to try and make ToorCon more notable?

Here’s a conundrum. Firefox is designed to automatically pick up the Windows Media Player Netscape plugin files when you start it up, so then there is no configuration necessary on your part. This has worked fine for Windows XP, but for Vista, something isn’t right. You won’t see WMP at all, instead you get told to install the “missing plugin,” which the service can’t find.

What’s going on here? All previous versions of Windows included the Netscape plugin, but it seems Vista has cut that part out. It is easy to solve.

Stop the presses!

Microsoft has released a plugin specifically for Firefox to restore Windows Media playback. For more information see this post.

The old post continues…

If you are dual-booting with another version of Windows, the easiest way is to copy a couple of files: npdrmv2.dll; npdsplay.dll; and npwmsdrm.dll. You’ll find these in the Program Files\Windows Media Player directory in your older Windows partition. Copy these to the plugins folder where Firefox is installed (usually Program Files\Mozilla Firefox).

If not, you’ll need to download these files. You can get them each: npdsplay.dll; npwmsdrm.dll; and npdrmv2.dll. As above, place them in your plugins folder where you installed Firefox.

Once you are done, the browser will instantly recognise the new plugin(s) and you’ll be able to start using them.

There are alternatives to this solution, which can be found here.

I recently installed Windows Vista (build 5536). It’s nice, but I’m still not going to use it full-time just yet. But I wanted a way to share my profile for Firefox in Windows XP and in Windows Vista. So I installed Firefox and started doing a bit of research, and it is quite easy.

First, backup your profile. It will be in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles.

In Windows Vista, either go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Run, Start > Run if you have it showing, or WindowsKey + R to show the Run dialog. Next, type:
X:\path to firefox\firefox.exe -p
This will load the profile manager, delete the Default profile.

Load the Run dialog again, type:
X:\path to firefox\firefox.exe -CreateProfile "default c:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxx.default"
That xxxxxx you’ll have to find out by going to that folder. When you hit enter, you are done and should load up Firefox with that profile.

(If you are trying to find Application Data in Vista, it is X:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming)