MSFT Edge blocking Firefox Installer!

Topic

New Reply

And the campaign heats up from the MSFT corner in the internet browser options, that Edge 90.0.818.56 stable (at time of posting) reportedly blocks the firefox browser installer (dev/beta/stable) from being downloaded.

Venkat over on Techdows has published an interesting article which entails lowering MSFT security measures via Defender smartscreen to download the firefox installer, when using the most current Edge Chromium, otherwise users have been faced with the following warning:

Firefox installer.exe was blocked because it could harm your device.

Venkat concludes that using another browser is the safest method to download the firefox installer. Wonder if the browser installer will download if you don’t use another browser..potential catch22?

To quote a MSFT slogan ‘where do you want to go today?‘
not to Mozilla Firefox it seems

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth

Reply | Quote

Replies

. . . . We’re not able to reproduce this for any Firefox version. The false-positive may have been fixed from the server-side by Microsoft. . . .

It’s not an issue when I tried it with the Smartscreen on or off.
Firefox downloads fine.

Reply | Quote

When Edge blocks a download, there is always a menu option to keep the file anyway:

Reply | Quote

Downloading Firefox with Edge Version 90.0.818.56 (Official build) (64-bit) I got this page :

Windows 10 Pro 20H2.

Reply | Quote

That message is from the Mozilla page, not from Edge.

Reply | Quote

The culprit is Edge.

Downloading with Chrome (Firefox downloaded)

Reply | Quote

Did you follow the link to see what Mozilla said about the issue?

The page is from Mozilla, but that doesn’t mean Mozilla cancelled the download. It looks like they knew about the issue and wrote a script to detect it and display that message… what a sad state of affairs it would be if they have to have a handler for a competitor’s browser deciding to cancel downloads of competing products.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

Reply | Quote

Ascaris wrote:

Did you follow the link to see what Mozilla said about the issue?

I followed the link. Edge hasn’t got the chance to start downloading and blocking.
The Firefox page I got is really out-of-place (unsupported OS and Language ?)

Reply | Quote

Alex5723 wrote:

Edge hasn’t got the chance to start downloading and blocking.

Edge not culprit then?

Reply | Quote

Ascaris wrote:

It looks like they knew about the issue and wrote a script to detect it and display that message… what a sad state of affairs it would be if they have to have a handler for a competitor’s browser deciding to cancel downloads of competing products.

There is no issue, and therefore no sad state of ffairs.

Reply | Quote

Hence my equivocal language. I don’t trust MS, but that doesn’t mean they automatically are at fault.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

Reply | Quote

b wrote:

Alex5723 wrote:

Edge hasn’t got the chance to start downloading and blocking.

Edge not culprit then?

Yes, it is. Edge probably sent some crap user agent data to get that response from Mozilla.

Reply | Quote

It doesn’t happen with Edge for me, so it’s probably some other crap on your PC.

Reply | Quote

b wrote:

It doesn’t happen with Edge for me, so it’s probably some other crap on your PC.

It doesn’t happen with Chrome for me, hence it is Edge.

Reply | Quote

Well, it doesn’t happen for me either with Chredge 90.0.818.56. I just typed in “firefox.com” to the address bar in Chredge and was taken right to the main Firefox page. Clicked the “Download Firefox” button in the upper-right-most corner of that page, and a box (flyout?) came up under the download arrow of Chredge asking me where I wanted to save the file. I told it where to save it and it then downloaded with no issues or complaints at all from Chredge or from Windows Defender. And, yes, I have Windows Defender SmartScreen enabled for Chredge.

For those experiencing problems, it sounds to me like there’s an overly aggressive security setting on your machine that’s enabled somewhere that’s not readily apparent.

One more bit of information: I have Windows Defender on Windows 10 Pro version 20H2 build number 19042.928 (April patches applied) and Antimalware client version 4.18.2104.10, Engine version 1.1.18100.6 and Antispyware/Antivirus Version of 1.339.303.0.

1 user thanked author for this post.

b

Reply | Quote

I totally agree with this anonymous person.

I can NOT reproduce the ChrEdge problem Alex5723 is having here (though I’m using Edge v90.0.818.51 not the 90.0.818.56 build) and the firefox stub installer downloads fine on my end without being blocked

Reply | Quote

EP wrote:

I totally agree with this anonymous person.

I can NOT reproduce the ChrEdge problem Alex5723 is having here (though I’m using Edge v90.0.818.51 not the 90.0.818.56 build) and the firefox stub installer downloads fine on my end without being blocked

I don’t use Defender (I use Kaspersky which has nothing to do with blocking the download).

Tested just now. Got the same screen (OS and language incompatible).

Reply | Quote

Go to this BrowserLeaks page in both Chredge and Chrome and see what the difference is.

JavaScript Browser Information – BrowserLeaks

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote