May 3rd, 2019: The Day Firefox Nuked Everyone's Extensions

[RIP-Felix]

I've been trying to find out what happened to all of my extensions for the past hour. Basically firefox said they have been disabled due to expired digital signatures, but they are respected current add-ons like HTTPS everywhere, Norton Safe Search, Ghostery, DuckDuckGo Privacy essentials, and etc. Apparantly this is a know issue that is hitting everyone today. It began hitting users yesterday, who had their clock set forward one day. 

Anyway, if your having this issue. There is a potential workaround. Change your computer's clock to manual and go back to may 2, before the Firefox Nuke was set to detonate. I've read too, that disabling xpinstall.signatures.required in the About:config helps. I already had this disabled, but it still nuked me. However, when I set my clock back I was able to install an addon. And after a while the extensions came back - not immediately curiously (actually while I was writing this, 10-15 mins later after opening a tab).

There is a reddit page full of people complaining about this. So I'm not alone.

[tthurman]

I don't use any of those, but none of my extensions are disabled.  I use privacy badger, which is similar to DDG PE.

 

[RIP-Felix]

I had it fixed with the date turned back, but yesterday my extensions got nuked again. I turned the clock back another day and nothing happened. I set it back to automatic, but they're still gone. I just set it back to Thursday again, maybe they will come back after a few minutes like last time. ***EDIT: Nope!*** WTF Mozilla?  If I didn't hate Google and MS so much, I'd be switching browsers about now!

21 hours ago, tthurman said:

I don't use any of those, but none of my extensions are disabled.  I use privacy badger, which is similar to DDG PE.

Yeah the issue doesn't affect all plugins. However, the only one of mine that wasn't nuked was "New Tab Homepage", which I have set to DuckDuckGo.com. Mozilla has a Hotfix rolling out in "a few hours". Here is their official response.

[tthurman]

This is why I use FF, show me a IE or Chrome post that addresses something that fast, yeah right.

We'll fix it when we're ready is more like it.

 

Apple already started dropping extensions for items it considers unsafe, so I think you're going to see this become more of a thing moving forward.  Many of these extensions represent crazy security risks, which is why I never understood such early adoption of some of them, specifically password managers.

[RIP-Felix]

Yeah, good call about password managers. I have avoided them mainly because it seems unsafe to record them at all, anywhere but in my head. However, I'm told that is old school thinking because password managers can produce stronger passwords harder to crack than anything our brain can remember. Plus they can be changed more frequently without hassle and be set to autofill to make things easier. SO...I see the appeal. I just don't trust it, call me old fashioned.

[RIP-Felix]

21 hours ago, tthurman said:

I don't use any of those, but none of my extensions are disabled.  I use privacy badger, which is similar to DDG PE.

privacy badger looks interesting, learning based, not list based. Starts blocking tracking elements once it sees it on 3 different websites. I just installed uBlock Origin, which is list based, but efficient. It blocks more elements than Ghostery, HTTPS everywhere, DuckDuckGo privacy essentials, but It also breaks alot of websites. However, the lists can be customized to work better. I just haven't put in the time yet. I think the badger will be a good one to add to the quiver.

[RIP-Felix]

The Hotfix just got applied on my machine...Yay!

Discovered Friday, hotfixed on Sunday. FireFox rocks.