How Internet Explorer can adversely affect Firefox

Article

 

I don't know where all this has come from but I ran IE 7 on High under XP SP3 along with the Firefox 3 series and NEVER had this issue.

 

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb...ble_downloads_blocked_by_Security_Zone_Policy

It's all about the "Launching applications and unsafe files" setting in IE. If you set that to disable, Firefox can't download exe files. If you set it to anything other than disable, Firefox can download exe files. That's because the "Internet Explorer security settings" are really supposed to be "system internet security settings", so Firefox attempts to respect the settings (in this particular case - it sure doesn't respect them with regards to Javascript for example). Other browsers don't care.

 

Tweaking IE settings has no bearing on FF, frankly I do not understand this

FF can be used with add-ons such as NoScript, etc, which cannot be used in IE.

 

Actually, this is false... A simple test, import this into registry:

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\3]
"1806"=dword:00000003

Now, try to download the eicar.com test file in FF. It won't download. In fact, none of the "high-risk" files will download.

 

This would be assuming the user would be willing or able to attempt and successfully complete a Registry tweak.

I would not be comfortable prescribing this to a user to show a proof of concept works.

Entirely up to the OP to go forward at her/his own peril and risk.

 

Well, that was not a suggestion to the OP. That was a response to your claim that IE zones settings have no effect on FF.

The values are described in KB182569 and the one above is a group policy equivalent of setting Miscellaneous: Launching applications and unsafe files to Disable for the Internet Zone.

 

I see Let me have a look and I will post back my comments.

Thanks for the info and clarification. Appreciate the time and effort.