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Re:Firefox 42 will not allow unsigned extensions by dveditz_ on Thursday August 13, 2015 @10:55AM (#10054648)
The target is not illegal malware which, as you say, would do anything. But there's a vast amount of detrimental foistware doing malicious things (e.g. injecting ads, tracking) under legal cover because the user somewhere forgot to uncheck some light-grey box in an installer. Anyone tried to install something from Sourceforge lately?

Modifying the Firefox installation directory would get flagged by any anti-virus, but software using the defined extension points does not -- the user "agreed" to it.

Re:Firefox 42 will not allow unsigned extensions by yellowapple on Thursday August 13, 2015 @01:42PM (#10055920)
Right, but my point is that if some bit of adware is capable of checking that box without being able to do far more nefarious things (like outright patching/replacing Firefox itself), then one particular symptom of that ability ought to be the least of users' - and Mozilla's - concerns; that indicates an ability to modify the execution state of a program during runtime, in which case probably nothing on that computer is safe.