There is a problem with an expired intermediate certificate that is used to sign extensions. This is being worked by the Add-ons team.

See:

• [/questions/1257928] Will the disabling of add-ons be fixed, or is it the new way?
• https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/certificate-issue-causing-add-ons-to-be-disabled-or-fail-to-install/39047

At about 6:10 PST we received a report that a certificate issue for Firefox is causing add-ons to stop working and add-on installs to fail.
Our team is actively working on a fix. We will update as soon as we have more information.

• Bug 1548973 - (armagadd-on-2.0) All extensions disabled due to expiration of intermediate signing cert

(please do not comment in bug reports
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html)

There is a problem with an expired intermediate certificate that is used to sign extensions. This is being worked on by the Add-ons team.

Hi cor-el

First-- Many kind thanks for the prompt reply, as I sit here going through Java Script trying to parse where FVD put the thumbnails for all of the bookmarks I had.

Your kindness and promptness is very much appreciated, saves me hopefully a code parsing effort.

Reading your post I understand this as it being a problem with Firefox (not with the plugin devs), and again assuming that the plugin devs got an expired cert from Mozilla as part of the update program I assume Moz does. So if its a cert, will the plugin re certification happen automatically in other words w00t tomorrow everything is back to normal?¿ Or will this necessitate reinstalling the plugins (in which case my bookmarks might be lost) or will it involve an upstream update of Firefox that will make its way into the Manjaro "stable" at some point?

Again many kind thanks for your promptness. As an aside if you know where the bookmarks are stored in FVD Speed dial's plugin I really would appreciate the info-- I have already posted to them asking where in /home/usr/.mozilla/firefox/yadayada this might be and have not heard anything as of yet. Any further help you might provide would be deeply appreciated. Warmest regards, Thanks for the great reply on Friday night and I hope you and yours have an excellent weekend.

Expat

No it is not a problem with any version of the Firefox web browser itself.

Also it is Extensions as Plugin refers to for example the Flash Player Plugin from Adobe.

Hi James Thanks very much for the help. So what was disabled were a number of extensions due to what I think I understood from cor-el's post, an expired certificate. So the dev's of the extensions had their work signed with a cert that expired. So its not a problem local to my 2 production machines but rather with the signing of the extensions. So in my somewhat limited understanding of this whole process, then Mozilla or someone will issue valid certificates to the extension devs which will then possibly update their extensions. Trouble with this is that on my about:addons page there is a mess. Under the unsupported tab are listed the extensions I specified in my original post. So assuming that a valid cert is reissued to FVD Speed Dial then I am concerned about whats going to be necessary to make the extension work again. If it means re installing there is the risk of lost data i.e. 9 tabs, a total of a couple hundred bookmarks that are absolutely critical. I do hourly backups with backintime but without knowing where the bookmarks are stored I dont have much hope of saving anything without..... reinstalling the FVD extension from a backup...... but that would be with an expired certificate that caused the problem in the first place. So I would be pretty much where I am now.

Also from reading the page provided here https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-on-signing-in-firefox?as=u&utm_source=inproduct it says that

"Mozilla verifies and "signs" add-ons that follow a set of security guidelines. All add-ons hosted on addons.mozilla.org have to go through this process in order to be signed"

so the signing is done with a certificate and this is done by Mozilla. From my sysadm days I am somewhat familiar with keeping certificates updated although not exactly in this setting.

Understand its not a problem with the web browser per se but with add ons. I also assume that as cor-el stated, its being worked on by the add-ons team (his words) so are these Firefox people or...... understand I would not have these concerns were it not for the fact that Firefox along with all of its extensions and add ons, is being used in a production environment so its a concern for me.

I am not trying to be at all contentious with any of this but I do have concerns about preserving sites saved under FVD Speed dial. Again if anyone knows where the bookmarks are saved so I might either retrieve these files or at least know what to think about restoring with Timeshift at which point Speed dial is again functional, it would be deeply appreciated.

Thanks very much, James, for the kind effort to help. Regards and have a great weekend.

I do not know what intermediate certificates are involved with checking the extension signing and how these certificates are installed in Firefox. Extensions do not need to be updated if I understand correctly, but I do not know whether disabled extensions will be re-enabled automatically once this certificate has been renewed.

Setting back the time doesn't sound like a good advice when you consider OCSP responses that rely heavily upon a correct time (a few hours might work).

Hi cor-el

Thanks for the continuing interest.

Understand about the OCSP responses. What I was thinking about was trying to use the backintime backup program that works somewhat similar to OSX Timeshift to restore the FVD Speed Dial extension from a time earlier than when all the extensions failed due to the certs expiring. However reading elsewhere here on the forum, looks like Moz has a lot of people experiencing the same thing I am. So apparently when Firefox periodically calls home (something I have seen using wireshark when monitoring web traffic) I am guessing that it periodically checks signed extensions for validity and those certs died today. I hope that nothing has to be updated but maybe things on the about:addons page will change where everything can be re enabled. Guess the guys responsible for the certs and the addon devs arent going to have much of a weekend.

Thanks again for the continued interest and help.

Regards

Brief note. Want to thank cor-el and james for the kindness and interest. Looking around here this looks like a great forum with a lot of willing and knowledgeable volunteers. A pleasure to be here and receive the help. Also reading the discourse thread regarding the cert problem here

https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/certificate-issue-causing-add-ons-to-be-disabled-or-fail-to-install/39047/8

that cor-el so kindly posted, it is heartening to see the devs actively working on this problem and giving us updates on progress toward resolution. From my experience in IT related things, this is a huge plus for Firefox, the volunteers here and the devs. Something not found very frequently any longer. Thanks to all !

Firefox allows via the about:debugging page to install a temporary extension. This extension gets its own UUID, so you do not have access to the settings of the current version, but will allow to use the extension.

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Temporary_Installation_in_Firefox

cor-el Many thanks. Will give this a try. Regards

Mozilla has rolled-out a fix for this. The fix will be automatically applied in the background within the next few hours, you don’t need to take active steps.

In order to be able to provide this fix on short notice, they are using the Studies system. You can check if you have studies enabled

1. Go to [=] > Preferences > Privacy & Security.
2. Make sure Allow Firefox to install and run studies is check marked.

I you had it disabled, you can disable studies again after your add-ons have been re-enabled.

They are working on a general fix that doesn't need to rely on this and will keep you updated.

Chris

Hope this works until the permanent fix is out. I have enabled install and run studies per your suggestion and what the devs suggested on the discourse thread--and am waiting for the magic to happen. So far nothing though, just enabled studies- maybe I need to restart the browser, yes?

Many thanks. I know its been a busy few hours for all. Regards

Chris Shortly after I posted the last, restarted Firefox and the extensions are back. I am going to hang on to this thread for a bit to see what happens with the permanent fix but I wanted to say thank you again to you, to cor-el and to james for the great help and kindness with assisting me this problem. Thanks to all of you for the interest and suggestions. So far running again with the 1548973 hot fix signing and verification timestamp studies active.

Regards.