Firefox 39 to allow downloads of malicious files

Firefox users who want to download files that are blocked by the safe browsing feature of the browser will soon get the possibility to disable it. The open source browser makes use of Google's Safe Browsing technology to determine whether downloads are safe or not.

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It's possible however, that some files are wrongly blocked, so called false positives. For (security) researchers that want to further investigate a file it can also be useful to be able to disable the feature. Therefore several users complained about the way the download manager currently works. Austrian Firefox user Sören Hentzschel discovered that in an early test version of Firefox 39 the user will get possibility to unblock blocked files.

The browser will show a warning that the file might contain a virus or other malware and might be harmful to the computer. Users are can then decide to close the notification or unblock the file. The feature should become part of Firefox 39 which is scheduled for the end of June this year.

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