Firefox In Loop Tryng To Install Suspicious/Unwanted Add-on

User Help for Mozilla Firefox
Post Reply
Scott_1A
Posts: 207
Joined: March 25th, 2006, 5:12 pm

Firefox In Loop Tryng To Install Suspicious/Unwanted Add-on

Post by Scott_1A »

I just picked up a problem with FF on one of my computers. I started getting a drop-down message saying "Allow interfrogs.com ?" "You are attempting to install an add-on from interfrogs.com. Make sure you trust this site before continuing". It then gives me the choice or continuing to installation (which of course I'm not about to do) or "don't allow". I select "don't allow" and then get a window showing a download bar and the message "downloading and verifying add-on".

I then get a command line window marked "Firefox Update" and after the usual MS verbiage at the top, I get a command line which says "c:user>firefox-update.exe", then "proceed update (Y/N)" and of course I am not going say either Y or N until I get this solved. On top of that, I get another windows which says "to continue you must perform a manual update" with an either "OK" or "cancel". I'm not about to press "OK" but when I press "cancel", I just get the download bar and the message "downloading and verifying add-on" from interfrogs.com again and the cycle repeats.

This loop keeps repeating regardless of what I try. I can shutdown FF but as soon as I start it again, the same problem occurs. If I start it in "safe" mode, the problem occurs as well. There is no way that FF should be asking me for a manual update because it was already updated to the latest level.

I have Malwarebytes free 4.3.0 on the system. I ran a scan with that and it picked up 3 PUP programs which I quarantined. That had no effect on the problem. I ran a scan of Windows Security anti-virus (which I also have active on the system) and it said no threats found. All of the protection areas (including app and browser control) are green and said "no action needed". I also couldn't find any suspicious programs or tasks running or anything suspicious in the startup programs.

FF is at 84.0 and I had just updated Windows 10 on that system to 2H20 before the problem started. It seems that FF has picked up some malware but I can't find it and get rid of it. Can anyone tell me what is going on here and how i can get rid of it? Thanks.
User avatar
DanRaisch
Moderator
Posts: 127187
Joined: September 23rd, 2004, 8:57 pm
Location: Somewhere on the right coast

Re: Firefox In Loop Tryng To Install Suspicious/Unwanted Add

Post by DanRaisch »

Not sure what's triggered all of that but you can try to eliminate the problem by launching Firefox to the Profile Manager and creating a new profile -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager
and
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Creating_a_ne ... on_Windows
User avatar
jscher2000
Posts: 11742
Joined: December 19th, 2004, 12:26 am
Location: Silicon Valley, CA USA
Contact:

Re: Firefox In Loop Tryng To Install Suspicious/Unwanted Add

Post by jscher2000 »

This could be a problem with crash recovery of a malicious tab. Firefox doesn't have a good way to address that after the tab has been opened, but it's still possible. I've got steps for that in the following post:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/quest ... er-1370290
Scott_1A
Posts: 207
Joined: March 25th, 2006, 5:12 pm

Re: Firefox In Loop Tryng To Install Suspicious/Unwanted Add

Post by Scott_1A »

Thanks for the responses. I did try a new profile and that worked fine. Before I did that however, I took the current profile that I was having the problems with and used CCleaner to wipe out the cache, history, sessions, cookies etc. I wiped out everything in that FF profile that I could get to with CCleaner. I had been planning to clean up that profile soon anyway so I really didn't lose much. Once I did that, the problem profile worked fine as did the new profile I created.

If I had not been content to wipe that old profile clean, I would have used the procedure described by Jscher2000 in the previous post, which is excellent and very helpful. The problem with tab recovery he is describing looks exactly like what I was experiencing. I hate to think of what might have happened had I let that manual update or that firefox-update.exe run.

The problem which I think started everything off is noted below. My screenshots and problem behavior were almost identical to that described in this article. I've gone ahead and added Malwarebytes Premium (which I have on my primary computer) to this computer. It should provide me with some extra security since it catches most of the bad stuff before it even gets onto the computer in the first place.

https://www.pcrisk.com/removal-guides/1 ... op-up-scam

>>Do not trust the "To continue, you must perform a manual update" scam<<

Image
tisell
Posts: 1
Joined: April 9th, 2021, 1:32 pm

Re: Firefox In Loop Tryng To Install Suspicious/Unwanted Add

Post by tisell »

I got the same popup and researched it. All the "Windows-popups" you see on that website is fake html that disguises as actual windows-programs.

The website tries to get you to download a malicious version of the safe extension "HTML Validator".
Their version of the extension downloads more JS through it's code, which again downloads more JS.

This last JS then redirects Facebook-links to russian pages, redirects your search to russian websites like Yandex, or Yahoo affiliate links, and other stuff.
If anyone cares, please consider reporting the domains used by the extension: interfrogs(dot)com, folhigh(dot)com and macflare(dot)com.

Also sorry if this is a necro, I just registered to answer this
Post Reply