A new feature of Firefox 76 is the protection against prying eyes in the password management. Mozilla has now withdrawn this feature in Firefox 76 and Firefox 77 Beta. The protection should come back later in an improved form.
Firefox users have been able to secure their passwords with a master password for many years. Then the passwords are encrypted securely and for the first interaction with passwords in a Firefox session the entered master password is required.
However, many users have not set a master password. In this case, curious people with access to the computer could easily see all saved passwords under about: logins.
For users of Windows and Apple macOS from version 10.12, Mozilla had in Firefox 76 implemented an innovation which ensures that users without a master password have to authenticate themselves via the operating system if they want to access the passwords via about: logins. That means: in the form of the system password or biometrics, such as a fingerprint, if one is stored. After authentication, Firefox remembers this for five minutes. Afterwards, a new authentication would be necessary to view saved passwords.
Mozilla has the new feature via remote access for users of Firefox 76 and Firefox 77 Beta again deactivated. It was therefore not necessary to update the program version.
The reason for the deactivation of the new function is a high error rate: Users of Firefox 76 could not access their passwords in 20 percent of the cases, as Mozilla’s telemetry data showed.
A high error rate is not solely due to technical problems. Uncertainties on the user side also play a major part in this. For example, if users do not understand that they should enter their Windows and not their Firefox password. Or users who no longer know their password because they do not need it to use the computer.
Mozilla plans several improvements to reduce the error rate. This includes a better description of the required access data and skipping authentication for those users who are automatically logged in and do not have to enter a password to use the operating system.
The password protection is expected to come back with Firefox 78. Firefox 78 is currently scheduled for June 30, 2020 appear.
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