Firefox Breakdown Due to Security Certificate
 

All of a sudden, I'm having a problem with my browser of choice, Firefox. This doesn't affect Safari or the computer's hard drive. Some security certificate has just expired (sec_error_expired_certificate), causing a drop-down box to appear that I can't rid of, even when rebooting the computer. Not only that, but I can't move around the page and the top level navigation choices (File, Edit, etc.) have disappeared. Help!

This sounds more like a malware issue than a Firefox one. Firefox wouldn't spontaneously make menu bars disappear, for example. It would just show the certificate error in place of the web page you requested.

That's what I figured. Since only Firefox seems to be infected, would de-installing and re-installing Firefox on the same computer possibly solve the problem?

I don't think this is something that can be diagnosed remotely, without even seeing a screenshot.

My advice to the OP would be to get an IT specialist to look at their machine - rather than rely on wild guesses posted to an online travel forum.

This could be related to the recent certificate expiration of 'freecause' which is the search engine many air lines use in their 'tool bars' I received a similar warning and had to disable the tool bar for a few hours while freecause updated their cert.

Believe it or not, there are in fact quite a few "IT specialist's" in this very forum...

Regards

I have no doubt about that... but I doubt that a real IT specialist would try to analyse a problem remotely, with just a vague description and not even as much as a screenshot.

Yeah, but we aren't going to get very far with such a vague description. Post a screenshot!

Someone PM'd me with the correct diagnosis:

<Your Firefox problem is caused by a Freecause toolbar. First, change your system's date to September 22nd. Then open Firefox, uninstall the toolbar, and change the date back.>

The problem toolbar was probably the U.S. Airways Dividend Miles number that I downloaded to get a hit in their Grand Slam. Thanks a lot, US!

Yeah, I have a problem on Firefox and it's won't working too well. I have been trying to get on firefox a several times. I need your help try to fixes the firefox for me. I am not sure to whether that is something gone wrong the Firefox.

Actually, it appears we got quite far indeed. These are not rocket science problems...

Regards

Only because it was recognized to match a known issue.

Download Malwarebytes and run it immediately. If it is not malware, it won't hurt anything. If it is, it may catch it before more malware infects other programs.

Do a full scan, and if it finds anything, run it a second time. If Malwarebytes won't install for you, you probably already have an infection. I ran into that on one machine, where the malware is smart enough to disable malwarebytes. Changing the filename to a .bat from .exe in turn fooled the infecting program.

So, of course, fixing it doesn't count.....:confused::(

The information provided wasn't anything like enough to actually solve the problem. That's very different than being able to recognize that the problem is likely the same as one that others solved with far more information.