Sunday, 9 February 2014

Frozen Browser: The Freezers





We have recently encountered an interesting problem: One of our browsers (Firefox) was getting stuck, like it would park at the provider’s page and would not move from there. 



We knew we were owing nothing to the provider and things worked fine when we opened our other browser, so that it had to do with Firefox.



We tried all our current resources (anti-virus program, malware program, etc.) but nothing was being able to detect the problem.



We then finally run a cleaner on our computer and Firefox came back to life.



We got rid of cookies and other temporary files plus a few others.


Upon performing a multicriteria comparative analysis, we concluded that it had been either the cookies or the temporary files.


Whenever we have the same problem since back then, we run the cleaner and it all works fine after that.

 Because both the malware and the anti-virus program did not detect anything, we conclude that these freezers are embedded in the cookies or temporary programs as if they were normal items.

 
Because it freezes on the provider’s page, it is likely to be the case that it is using their system to make it happen.

 It must then work with the validation of credentials when we connect.

 The system would usually return a yes but will return a no and not let us navigate without telling us that.

 It only happens with Firefox.

 Our best theory so far is that Firefox allows for a local search in what regards the page of the provider and we are getting a Trojan page somehow as an image of another website that we are probably frequently accessing, which could even be a LinkedIn sort of fake discussion (we got a few of those from one of our human rights groups). 


Anyway, the hint is cleaning the computer whenever you get a freezer.


The program that we have used to clean those temporary files and cookies used to be freely available on the Internet until recently but now one has to pay to have it.

 You can still manually delete all those. 

 You actually can use the own browser to do that almost all the time (it will depend on the browser you have).

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