[resolved/unrelated] Waterfox?

[kukla]

WF 56.0.4.1/Mac.

Have been trying this out. But one thing that is a bit concerning is that, since I'm only trying it out, haven't yet set Little Snitch to allow all port 80/port 443 connections from WF, as I have with my 52esr or FF 59, I'm seeing any number of outgoing connections, almost all of which are necessary.

Wondering though, how this particular prompt got established, seemingly out of the blue--and what would happen if I had allowed it, as might already be occurring with my other FF browsers. Since I can't possibly attend to all these needed (and not some not so needed) outgoing connections for various sites, will at some point have to allow all from WF for ports 80/443, just as I have elsewhere. If allowed, where would this kind of garbage get stopped, at uMatrix, NoScript? Used to have Request Policy, now defunct, but using that was a big PITA, so even before its demise had stopped using it. What do I have to worry about if this kind of garbage is allowed to connect?

[GµårÐïåñ]

Can't be sure but likely it is coming from an ad on a page you are viewing that is triggering the connect. Also, if you have prefetch enabled, it will often start pulling links on the page in the background even if you are not visiting or planning to visit it, you can disable that. Without more on how you got that notice, those would be best guesses.

As far the connection to a site, unless you use ABE, NS itself won't do much on that other than to block the potentially bad things (aka scripts and such) to protect you from anything malicious but nothing is going to block a straight up connection to any site. Of course say uBlock and you "shitlist" the site, then yeah it will break access to it, but that's effectively the RP (PITA) you mentioned earlier, so there is that. uMatrix and NS pretty much will neuter the scripting and "bad" stuff, not the actually connection. Again, unless you make special rules.

[barbaz]

What page were you on when you saw that?

[kukla]

What page were you on when you saw that?

Wasn't on any particular page. If I recall correctly, was in the midst of testing a CSS for color of links visited, wth a search of "123"--left open for a minute or two while I was away doing something else at FF 59. But only link opened during that testing was completely unrelated to that garbage, a site at Santander Bank UK. A bit difficult to reconstruct how I might have inadvertently done that myself, if that was the case.

[kukla]

It's either my profile, which might have some minor corruption--almost entirely copied from my 52esr via the WF Profile Manager>New Profile--or it's some flakiness in WF itself. I'm finding that several logins don't work until two or three page reloads--very weird. Have looked through all of my extensions that might be responsible, but can't narrow it down to any of them. Have tested with enabling and disabling those that are suspect, but no difference. Exact same rules in uMatrix and now Little Snitch.

Might be enlightening to someone who can understand them better than I, I can post the output from HttpFox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/httpfox), which show remarkable differences for allowed and refused connections for exact same logins in WF and FF52esr.

Think WF is based on the latest 56, so that might explain the glitches with my 52--not sure.

Very reluctant to create a new clean profile, means a lot of work, but it might come to that.

[barbaz]

I'm finding that several logins don't work until two or three page reloads--

Do you have e10s disabled in Waterfox?
Do you have rules in µMatrix that would block cookies?

[kukla]

I'm finding that several logins don't work until two or three page reloads--

Do you have e10s disabled in Waterfox?
Do you have rules in µMatrix that would block cookies?

e10s are enabled: Multiprocess Windows 1/1 (Enabled by user)

uMatrix not blocking cookies for the login (AOL Mail)

Would the specific output from HttpFox for this login be useful for this?

EDIT: I suppose that if that's all there is wrong with my WF, I can put up with two page reloads to get these logins working. Much better than redoing the profile, with no guarantee that that would be the fix.

[barbaz]

Does it work in Waterfox in a new, clean profile?

If not, try spoofing your Waterfox user-agent to match your Firefox 52 user-agent -

Code: Select all

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0

Would the specific output from HttpFox for this login be useful for this?

I don't have a AOL Mail login, so I wouldn't know what to look for, sorry.

[kukla]

Will try the suggestion to spoof my User Agent, but even if you don't have an AOL account, perhaps the output from HttpFox, stalled here before any page reloads, might make some sense. I basically use HttpFox at a very unsophisticated level, just to see what the particular outgoing connections look like. Most of it is way above my head, but maybe not for you. Screenshots, and maybe text. From what I can tell, a number of issues with digicert. Moved over the cert8.db from my esr, but that didn't seem to help.

https://s13.postimg.org/hq3btkutz/Http_Fox_WF_1.png

https://s13.postimg.org/oul5254iv/Http_Fox_WF_2.png

FWIW, here's the text:

Uh, oh, submitted as plain text without automatically parsing, but the spam filter won't allow it.

[kukla]

Changing User Agent isn't the fix. At some point I will get around to testing in a new profile, bringing over just uMatrix (to block the obnoxious AOL crap on logout) and bookmarks (for AOL). For the time being, will just live with reloading the page twice for those 2 logins--hoping it's only those 2. Thanks for the help with this. Disregard those HttpFox screenshots, which I suppose are mostly incomprehensible.

[GµårÐïåñ]

The references to aolcdn.com are due to sites that are "owned" by them and will always pull from them, no account is needed with them and doesn't mean you are using their services. I am still not sure what the problem is to be honest.

[kukla]

The login to AOL mail, for me, is a 3 stage login: 1, enter account name in a text field, 2, select associated password, which appears from a dropdown, and hit enter. Whereupon, 3, there appears a loading/progress bar, which when complete, opens to all mail in my inbox.

What happens with Waterfox, unlike either my FF59 or ESR,is that that loading bar inches forward a tiny bit and then stalls--the workaround being exactly 2 subsequent page reloads.

I've seen this kind of behavior before, which was fixed by page reloads (another multi-stage login--also similarly affected now) last year, where disabling Privacy Badger was the fix--reported by PB as a Firefox bug, and now resolved. But PB isn't the culprit this time. Have disabled that and several other addons which might have been responsible without any resolution.

I couldn't really make much sense out of those HttpFox screenshots (overlapping), but the point of providing them was that they are a record of everything occuring from the first step of the login up to where the stall begins. I thoght that, to someone who might know how to interpret them, they might provide some clues as to why the login stalls out

[kukla]

IRONY: just spent a couple of hours reinstalling all my addons from scratch in a new profile--Just near the end, discovered that the offending addon was HttpFox, the very one I was using to monitor what was happening. In a new profile or in the old one, with that disabled, the logins work just fine. Never suspected it, since it doesn't create any havoc whatsoever in my 52esr.

As The Stranger says in "The Big Lebowski," "Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you" Aaargh!!! .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPVLyB0Yc6I

[barbaz]

Nice troubleshooting Thanks for reporting back, glad you got it sorted.