Split Firefox topic for alternate browsers and other discussion

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

This is the first post copied here:

I agree with you again Andy.

Some people may not fully understand or appreciate what you have explained, but you said it well.

When I play around with old stuff I NEVER use it for anything vital, just for fun and comparing the old with the new, and sometimes taking a trip back down ‘memory lane’.

I had to quote the other posts because neither the Move nor the Split functionality is working properly today; it’s generating a WordPress error.

• This topic was modified 11 months, 3 weeks ago by Brian Masinick.

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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If possible on very old hardware running Live with old software versios is extremely safe.
If not feeling safe enough just unplug Internal Drives and activate ad blocking with badware
lists plus UFW.
Any nasty attacks just dd random overwrite the whole stick and replace your install.

I think at times we get too paranoid. I was succesfully comprimised by a drive by attacker
a few days ago. Browser latest TOR and reading on world news sites.

Most attackers have probably given up the toolchain for historic Fox.

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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If possible on very old hardware running Live with old software versios is extremely safe.

I’m thinking on a lot of those old non-SSE2 machines that you may not be able to run a live usb. It would be nice if that were available.

I think at times we get too paranoid. I was succesfully comprimised by a drive by attacker a few days ago. Browser latest TOR and reading on world news sites.

I’m confused – you say we are too paranoid, and then you give an example indicating we may not be paranoid enough. Was this a Windows machine that was compromised? I’d be interested to hear if it was antiX, but it doesn’t sound like it.

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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Hi andyprough,
I have no windoze machines in daily usage, and no dual boot.

Running antiX21 with latest TOR browser on a fairly modern machine.

Sites: Internet news, and info for visa application Vietnam. I suspect the latter was problematic.
Never had issues with Online Vietnamese newspaper editions.

I had already warned about Tor running respawned headless in previous posts, that was the start,
Browser seemed to freeze then crash and no longer displayed, disk CPU and network activity went
high, memory usage stayed near same. I cut off power immediately.

later with net disconnected torbrowser only started in headless state, so at least some configuration
was comprimised. The browser did not autostart.

Although I had already decided to reinstall from a backup, reinstalling torbrowser was not possible,
even after removing config and all found tor related from home and deleting cache area.

I restored my system from a very recent backup ISO.

My remark regarding too paranoid, on the few still usable sites with historic firefox and a very low
powered older machine the incentive for a hack is likely pretty low. No point in dropping a miner or similar.
Banking is a favorite target, sites require up to date browser, if user has multi factor logins and does not
fall in to a social engineering trap he or she should be pretty safe.

Most really badly comprimised systems required user interaction, plug in a found or given as present USB stick,
camera, phone, charging cable, card reader, sd card, headphones even a hands free plantronics then
install some dubious software the device asks for, ie give root access for a while and the real fun starts.

In past times, on a machine which will not boot from USB I was able to use an optical cd/dvd drive, I have no idea
if that is universally possible. The only 32 bit machine I still have is a server and at present not in use.

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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I had already warned about Tor running respawned headless in previous posts, that was the start,
Browser seemed to freeze then crash and no longer displayed, disk CPU and network activity went
high, memory usage stayed near same. I cut off power immediately.

That is awful – so some kind of a drive-by miner exploit taking advantage of the web page’s javascript errors, I would guess?

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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hi andyprough,
We are way OT now:
Awful situation, only if no recent and tested backup available.

As always readers, antiX makes creating a snapshot ISO from your running
system so very easy.
If you have no backup please make one now!. Write to a stick or DVD and
check your system can boot it. Keep it safe.

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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I think at times we get too paranoid

I definitely agree. Viruses etc, are just tiny little programs, and many of them may not work with an old SSE-only CPU. I would even postulate that using an ancient computer with a non-SSE2 CPU is a major protection against new viruses etc

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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[u]ModdIt wrote:[/u]

… on the few still usable sites with historic firefox

Nearly all sites I visit work OK, although a little slow, on my 22-year-old non-SSE2 650MHz laptop under WinXP with New Moon 28 SSE by roytam1 https://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/search/label/browser and under antiX with Firefox 60 (March 2019) and Firefox 68 (December 2019).

With Firefox 60 and 68 under antiX even airline sites like http://www.ryanair.com work OK on the ancient laptop. http://www.ryanair.com is my favorite script-heavy site for testing browser compatibility with my ancient Inspiron laptop. Firefox 78 under antiX 19.3 fails there (with the message “Gah. Your Tab just crashed”), and New Moon 28 under WinXP also fails there..

Banking is a favorite target [of hacks], sites require up to date browser, if user has multi factor logins

Firefox 60 and 68 under antiX and New Moon 28 SSE/WinXP work OK on my non-SSE2 Inspiron 7500, as of May 2022, with Paypal, ebay, Deutsche Bank, Volksbank, Caixa, to name a few. Login is secured by codes received by SMS to cell phone or obtained from a separate TAN Generator device.

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Brian Masinick

[Member andyprough]

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Brian Masinick wrote:

Firefox 60 and 68 under antiX and New Moon 28 SSE/WinXP work OK on my non-SSE2 Inspiron 7500, as of May 2022, with Paypal, ebay, Deutsche Bank, Volksbank, Caixa, to name a few. Login is secured by codes received by SMS to cell phone or obtained from a separate TAN Generator device.

Oh really? I would not have thought that those type of sites would work with an old Firefox version at all. If older versions of Firefox work so well, why does Mozilla keep changing so much stuff I wonder? Rather odd. Has Mozilla really needed 40 new major versions since they released a completely workable version 60? Seems like incremental small security and workability improvements would have been a better idea.

[Member ModdIt]

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andyprough wrote: If older versions of Firefox work so well, why does Mozilla keep changing so much stuff I wonder?

Older versions were not remotely controllable–Marionette or stuffed full with Telemetry and other sneaky ways to deceive
users while harvesting data together with cloudflare google apple and probably others I havent noticed yet.

Brian wrote on banking: Login is secured by codes received by SMS to cell phone.

SMS TAN is now considered insecure by many banks due a lot of succesful attacks on comprimised windoze systems.
The hidden Modern Fox screenshot extension is used by scammers which is why I delete it on every update.

I use Ing, to login with a browser a verified phone with special application is now required, then have to read 2 codes
from the computer screen.
Maybe so the bank can blame any scammed customer where others have to pay compensation.

Maybe I can put a dik in the anchient 386 server when I get some time to spare. That device was built in USA weighs a ton,
and extremely high quality components so sad when it gathers more dust. Be intersting to see how well antiX runs on it.
Should be fine as previous OS was Debian.

[Member ModdIt]

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As we already are talking security here,

Interesting for some Shocking, reading on how and when thousands of websites are gathering user data
including EMail adresses and Passwords while using online EMail forms. Even without form submission,

For forms, whenever sites are legal a proper EMail adress must be given. In others I extract the
adress with code inspection or search for contact details. If nothing at all available report the site.

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/sec22fall_senol.pdf

I use Claws Mail no HTML, no pdf plugin. Pretty near to never open any site as webmail.

• This reply was modified 11 months, 3 weeks ago by ModdIt.
• This reply was modified 11 months, 3 weeks ago by ModdIt.

[Member iznit]

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The hidden Modern Fox screenshot extension is used by scammers which is why I delete it on every update.

would you please give instructions how to remove. Thanks in advance.

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi iznit,
info you seek is posted several times already but we know the forum search
sometimes does not give up its secrets easily ;-).

The hidden firefox extensions are in /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser/features/ if you have
a standard antiX install. On a version downloaded from mozilla or installed in some other
way user needs to locate the browser features folder. I remove all hidden extensions, some
users may want to keep the picture in picture or other conveniences.

You can disable further plugins: pingsender crashreporter minidump analyser by renaming them
deleting them breaks the browser.

Unfortunately the action must be done every update, really easy with a tiny script but I do it
manualy as the number of hidden extensions can grow or names change.

# If you have LibreWolf installed the screenshot utility is included along with webcompat reporter
picture in picture and form autofill too. I was not expecting that. Location /usr/share/librewolf

For less experienced users Searching for installation locations is easiest with synaptic.

• This reply was modified 11 months, 3 weeks ago by ModdIt.

[Member ModdIt]

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The privacy focussed Browser Librewolf is now updated to Version 103.
On my antiX 21 testing installation I tried the appimage but found starting very slow compared to ungoogled chromium.
With the appimage unpacked I was unable to consistently start the browser.

After further searching I found the latest X64 generic version under https://gitlab.com/librewolf-community/browser/linux/-/packages
Menu Item; packages & registrys Package Registry shows all released versions as downloadable archives. Same way firefox is
distributed by mozilla.

I downloaded latest version and unpacked it, moved the package to /opt/Librewolf set the launch shell script to executable.
Using the controll center tool added Librewolf to my personal menu.

Before starting the browser I renamed pingsender and deleted the inherited hidden screenshot extension from brower features folder.

Without the need to unzip the appimage during start Librewolf is ready to use in an instant. 🙂

• This reply was modified 9 months, 1 week ago by ModdIt.

[Member andyprough]

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ModdIt wrote:

The privacy focussed Browser Librewolf is now updated to Version 103.
On my antiX 21 testing installation I tried the appimage but found starting very slow compared to ungoogled chromium.
With the appimage unpacked I was unable to consistently start the browser….

This is generally how I used to use Librewolf, by unpacking the AppImage and getting it linked and into the menus. But fortunately, they now have a repo for a Debian Bullseye version that works perfectly with antiX 21: https://librewolf.net/installation/debian/

Maybe that could be added to antiX PackageInstaller?

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