ubuntu firefox modifications add-on makes firefox is unresponsive when accessing webserver using windows based authentication

[Gerben Welter]

When accessing a Windows based webserver from work where my work (Active Directory) credentials are required Firefox becomes largely unresponsive. It does seem to process the website, but it isn't usable anymore and the firefox windows greys out for most of the time. It even sometimes causes the whole desktop to become unresponsive forcing me to switch to a VT and kill firefox.

It took me a while to find out that disabling the 'Ubuntu Firefox Modifications' add-on that fixed the problem.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Jeroen (r-ubuntuone-n)]

I am seeing this behaviour as well when trying to log in to my employer's intranet and erp sites. These servers use windows authentication.

[Steve O (techrgs)]

I am also seeing this behavior. It is causing significant problems for us, unfortunately. HOWEVER, it only seems to happen on pages with Windows authentication dialog boxes under HTTPS. This does not seem to be a problem using insecure HTTP. (But since we have to use HTTPS for security, that observation is moot for us.)

I have tested this on versions of Firefox ranging from 14.0.1 to 25.0.1 (and Ubuntu Firefox Modifications versions 2.1.1 to 2.7) and they all exhibit the same behavior.

I hope an update comes soon. :)

[Steve O (techrgs)]

Just did a little bit of testing, and this problem does not seem to occur on basic authentication, only on pages with Windows-based authentication dialog boxes. To confirm, I used tested Firefox running Ubuntu Firefox Modifications using the public testing endpoint at https://httpbin.org/basic-auth/user/passwd (with both HTTP and HTTPS). The username is "user" and the password is "passwd" for this particular endpoint. No problems were encountered here, since this is basic authentication instead of Windows authentication.