Firefox Web Browser To Automatically Block Crypto Mining Malware Scripts Soon

Firefox is a popular web browser and, because of this, many of its users have been attacked by an also popular malware, the type that uses your computer to mine crypto tokens for the attacker. Because of this, Firefox is already planning to block crypto mining malware scripts as part of a wider performance-enhancing initiative.

The Mozilla Foundation, which is responsible for Firefox, stated this week that it plans to block trackers and other types of harmful practices in upcoming versions of the browser. This is being done to prevent hackers and even sites to use scripts that can harm the experience of the users while browsing with Mozilla Firefox.

We just announced that we're working on stopping all cross-site tracking in Firefox. Not sure what cross-site tracking is in the first place?

We got you: https://t.co/6ppGJXBiXO

— Firefox 🔥 (@firefox) August 30, 2018

The vice president of product of the Mozilla Foundation, Nick Nguyen, explained that these scripts can be embedded on many sites and that the user will not even see that he is being harmed. A very common type are the scripts that hijack the unusual computer power of an individual.

According to Nguyen, these deceptive practices are becoming more common now and this makes the web a more hostile place, so the future versions of Firefox will block these practices by default as a way to improve the user experience of the clients.

New Version Will Be Tested On Firefox Nightly

The first software that will see these new changes is the Firefox Nightly version of the browser. If there are no problems with the experiment, they will start to be the default beginning with the Firefox 63 release.

With this move, Mozilla joins Google and Opera, which are already making an effort to protect their users from this type of harm, which can slow down user experience and damage computers in the worse cases.

While Opera announced on January that it would launch its new version of the software with protection for the users against this, Google has banned crypto mining apps from Play Store, but has not made any official statement on blocking embedded scripts on websites.