Re: Firefox 31.8.0: Use of Add-On "HTTPS Everywhere 5.1.2" causes 99% CPU utilization

Tom Brown wrote:
> Lars,
>
> Some additional information, which may or may not be relevant...
>
> I have had a similar problem, on a daily basis, for years. It happens
> with both FF (31.8.0) and with various versions of Seamonkey,
> currently  seamonkey-2.28b5r2. I do NOT have "HTTPS Everywhere 5.1.2"
> installed, either on FF or SM. I have a Tyan S2895 motherboard with
> dual AMD Opteron 275 CPUs (4 cores total, 2.2 Ghz).
>
> While running either SM or FF, typically in cnn.com or
> news.google.com, ONE of the cpus will go to 99.9%, the status line at
> the bottom of the screen will display "waiting for" some site such as
> doubleclick.net or another ad site, and the whole system will hang. At
> this point, it is difficult to bring up the window list using Ctrl-Esc
> ahthough it can usually be done eventually. If I wait long enough, I
> might regain control. Sometimes, I have to C-A-D and kill the browser.
> I can often run another OS/2 app, such as solitaire, PMView, etc. to
> pass the time while waiting for the browser to get over it's choking
> fit.
>
> This sounds to me like a different situation from yours, but I would
> really like to find a solution.
>
> I have the following add-ons installed in SM:
>
> Adblock Plus 2.6.11
> Chatzilla 0.9.92
> DownloadHelper 4.9.24.1-signed
> Flashblock 1.3.20
> NoScript 2.6.9.37
> Remove Duplicate Messages (Alternate) 0.3.8
> User Agent Switcher 0.7.3.1-signed
>
> If you or anyone else can shed some light on this, please respond!
>
> Thanks!

My guess is a subtle JavaScript bug[s]. I use NoScript to block as many 
scripts as I can get away with and have a fairly stable browser.
The ads are often compromised as well so at least in Toms case, it may 
well be a script trying to take advantage of a security hole. While 
often they won't work on our platform, they can still have negative effects.
Dave


>
> On Sun, 14 Feb 2016 11:39:55 UTC, Lars Erdmann <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> Hallo,
>>
>> this issue has been mentioned already quite often:
>> after starting the application Firefox becomes completely unresponsive
>> for timespans of say 10 seconds. Then it continues on until the same
>> happens again. When it becomes unresponsive, one of the CPU cores will
>> show 99% of usage, if you only have/use one core then of course that
>> core will show 99% of usage.
>>
>> As this is really frustrating, I disabled all add-ons and restarted
>> Firefox again and again, each time with one additional add-on reenabled.
>>
>> It now turns out that "HTTPS Everywhere 5.1.2" is the culprit.
>> If I have it disabled, I don't see this issue, if I enable it, I run
>> into the above mentioned problem. This is even true if an "internal"
>> webpage like about:addons is displayed in Firefox.
>>
>> Now, I don't blame Firefox for this error but we would need to find out
>> how an add-on executes within the Firefox application process and we
>> would need to think about how an add-on can be prevented from
>> monopolizing the whole application process.
>> I don't know if this problem is OS/2 specific but I fear that it is.
>>
>> Lars
>
>