Search Hijacking

Summary

• Web search is a lucrative business and so the search integration points in Web browsers have become a target for add-ons -- from legitimate, to grayware, to malware. The collection of techniques used to circumvent browser search defaults to funnel search revenues to third parties is referred to as "Search hijacking".
• With the increase in search hijacking and it's negative effect on user choice and control, Mozilla is looking into ways to help users defend themselves.

Reference

• Design and infrastructure:
  • bug 718088 - offer to re-set keyword.URL if it has a non-default value
  • bug 724145 - telemetry for search hijacking

Use Cases to Test

Basic Functional Testing

Edge Cases

Test Cases

• A list of test cases for this feature can be found here: Test Cases

Important bugs

• bug 738804 - back out keyword.URL prompting changes
• bug 736878 - keyword.URL reset prompt doesn't properly re-set prefs if default engine is modified