Mozilla Blocks Crash-Prone McAfee Firefox Add-on

Posted 10/05/2011 at 11:11am | by Brad Chacos

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Mozilla just can’t catch any slack; the new, memory-improved Firefox 7.0 is barely off the virtual printing presses and already some users are complaining that the thing is crash-tastic.  Not so fast: Mozilla pays attention to those crash reports that users send back, you see, and the company noticed that McAfee’s ScriptScan add-on was the cause of a lot of those fatal errors.  In fact, ScriptScan was creating such a high volume of crashes that Mozilla tossed the add-on in their blocklist yesterday.

ScripScan is part of McAfee’s VirusScan antivirus package and is designed to scan websites for malicious code. Unfortunately, the add-on does more harm than good, at least in Firefox; Mozilla says all versions of ScriptScan version 14.4.0 and below crash every version of Firefox and SeaMonkey.

“Users are strongly encouraged to disable the problematic add-on or plugin, but may choose to continue using it if they accept the risks described,” Mozilla’s website says.

On McAfee’s end, the problem only appears to be with Firefox; other browsers appear unaffected by crashes. McAfee is well aware of the problem; on the company’s forums, volunteer moderator Ex_Brit has confirmed that there is a bug report filed about it, and says McAfee is working with Mozilla to fix the problem. In the meantime, he suggests using another browser or installing McAfee’s SiteAdvisor add-on in ScriptScan’s stead.