Mozilla released an update to Firefox after Avast and AVG deemed the browser ransomware and crashed. However, thousands of Firefox users thought the problem was with the browser, Mozillas Gabriele Svelto said. Two days ago, Mozilla suddenly saw a spike in user crashes. Further investigation revealed that the antivirus software believed that part of Firefox was ransomware.
Mozilla came up with a solution and has rolled it out to users via Firefox 105.0.3. However, the browser developer has strongly criticized Avast and AVG. "Avast thinks the Mercurial executable we ship with Mozillas tooling for Windows is ransomware. In case you want to know how bad Avast is," Svelto says.
He is supported by Ben Hearsum, a staff engineer at Mozilla. "Avast is one of the antivirus vendors that also likes to play with Firefox updates. At one point, they rewrote update requests in such a way that users stopped getting updates." Thunderbird also warns users of the impact Avast, AVG and McAfee antivirus software can have on updates.
Svelto advises Firefox users to uninstall Avast and use Windows Defender, which is built into Windows by default and says it offers adequate protection and is less likely to cause problems. The latest Firefox update is available through the automatic update feature and Mozilla.org.