Configuring The Firefox Browser For OSINT

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Joseph Moronwi
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Configuring The Firefox Browser For OSINT

Post by Joseph Moronwi »

In this post, the author discusses the tweaking of the Mozilla Firefox browser for OSINT investigations.

If you use the Windows Operating system, Microsoft presents you with either Internet Explorer or Micosoft Edge as your default web browser. Mac OS users are presented Safari by default. I believe OSINT investigators and cybersecurity professionals should avoid these at all costs. All are inferior in my opinion, and you will encounter difficulties with some of the websites and services mentioned later. Therefore, we need a better browser.

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation. It has a great reputation for protecting users’ privacy since its launch. In fact, the Tor project uses Firefox as the preferred engine for its Tor Browser bundle. Firefox for Android is also open source software, and its code is available to anyone who wants to audit it.

Before identifying Firefox resources which will aid in our OSINT research, we must first secure our browser to the best of our ability. While the default Firefox installation is much more private and secure than most other browsers, we should still consider some modifications.

In this section, we will give technical advice on how to modify the Firefox settings to assure your online privacy and lower the amount of data leaking from your browser.
  1. Access the Firefox options by clicking the menu in the upper-right corner of your browser and selecting "Options" or "Preferences".
  2. In the "General" options, uncheck "Recommend extensions as you browse" and "Recommend features as you browse". This prevents some internet usage information from being sent to Firefox.
  3. In the "Home" options, change "Homepage and new windows" and "New tabs" to "Blank page". This prevents Firefox from loading their services in new pages and tabs.
  4. Move to the Privacy tab. You need to turn on the option Use Tracking Protection in Private Windows. When this option is enabled, each time you visit a web site, Firefox will send a signal that you do not want to be tracked. Of course, this is a voluntary action because some web sites may not obey your request. Still, it’s a good choice to enable it. Now go to the History section on the same page and select the option “Never remember history” so that Firefox will delete all your history every time you close it. Finally, go to the Location Bar section and disable all the suggestions in the search bar because the suggestion process can leak excessive data about you.
  5. Uncheck the box titled "Remember search and form history".
  6. Do not check the box titled "Always use private browsing mode", as this will break Firefox Containers.
  7. In the "Permissions" menu, click "Settings" next to Location, Camera, Microphone, and Notifications. Check the box titled "Block new requests ... " for each of these options.
  8. Uncheck all options under "Firefox Data Collection and Use".
  9. Move to the Security tab. Please configure it to prevent loading dangerous web sites and to prevent web sites from installing add-ons. Also, you need to configure Firefox not to store user passwords.
  10. Go to the Advanced tab. Here you will find multiple subtabs; select Data Choices. Disable the three available options named Enable Firefox Health Report, Share additional data (i.e., Telemetry), and Enable Crash Reporter. Crash reports can contain valuable data about your computer status. If such data should fall into the wrong hands when traveling online from your PC to Firefox servers, this can reveal the type of vulnerability/error you are facing and enable an outside attacker to exploit your machine.
  11. While you are still in the Advanced tab, go to the Network subtab, and make sure that the option “Tell me when a website asks to store data for offline use” is selected. This
    prevents web sites from planting a tracking code on your computer.
  12. While you are still on the Advanced tab, go to the Certificates subtab. In the Requests subtab, select "Ask Me Every Time".
Firefox allows users to modify many configuration settings, and some of these deal with privacy and security concerns. Though some of these changes can be made in the menu of Firefox's preferences, changes made through about:config tend to be more durable and granular. To access the list of configuration settings, open Firefox and type:

Code: Select all

about:config
into the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) field. This is the place where you would traditionally type the website you wish to visit.
A warning message will appear; hit the button “I accept the risk!”. The modifications we make will be safe.

Some of these about:config settings may already be on the correct setting, but most probably will not. To change most of these settings you can simply double-click the setting to toggle it between "True" and "False". Some may require additional input, such as a number. Because the list of about:config settings contains hundreds of entries, you should search for all of these through the search bar in the about:config interface. The settings displayed in the following examples are the desired options. To access a specific setting, you need to type its name in the Search box that appears at the top of the page.
  • geo.enabled: FALSE: This disables Firefox from sharing your location.
  • browser.formfill.enable: FALSE: To force Firefox to forget form information
  • media.navigator.enabled: FALSE: Website operators will identify your computer as unique to enable tracking around the web. One such tactic is to track the status of your webcam and microphone (ON/OFF). This disables the ability to website operators to see this information.
  • browser.cache.disk.enable: FALSE: Firefox can cache data to disk. This is dangerous because some of your browsing history may reside on your disk even after you delete all your previous browsing history. To disable this feature, set this field to false. You need to do the same with the setting browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl because Firefox has two setting for the content cache, one for normal websites and the second for secure websites (has SSL in its name).
  • browser.cache.offline.enable: FALSE: You must also prevent Firefox from caching web contents for offline use by changing this setting to false.
  • dom.battery.enabled: FALSE: Another technique used by website operators to track you is to view your exact battery levels. This setting blocks this information.
  • extensions.pocket.enabled: FALSE: This disables the proprietary Pocket service.
It is a good idea to ask Firefox to throw away all cookies automatically every time you close your browser. To do this, change the setting network.cookie.lifetimePolicy to 2. To change its value, double-click and enter 2 at the prompt.
The most interesting setting that can reveal your list of installed plug-ins is plugin.scan.plid.all. It is essential to disable this setting so visited websites will not be able to distinguish your browser from the add-on already installed (to minimize browser footprinting). In addition, some websites may ask you to disable an ad blocker to view their web site because they can detect if you have an ad blocker already activated in your browser. Change this setting to false.
  • WebRTC: These settings address a potential vulnerability of leaked IP addresses.
  • media.peerconnection.enabled: FALSE
  • media.peerconnection.tum.disable: TRUE
  • media.peerconnection.use_document_iceservers: FALSE
  • media.peerconnection.video.enabled: FALSE
These advanced configurations will harden Firefox and make it more difficult for outside parties to track your activities. In the next section, we will cover privacy add-ons that can further secure Firefox and fight against online tracking and user profiling.

Read the full article here: https://digitalinvestigator.blogspot.co ... r-for.html

About the author
Joseph Moronwi is a digital and forensic private investigator based in Nigeria. As a former victim of cybercrime, Joseph endeavours to use his digital forensic and IT security skills in the pursuit against cybercriminals operating from his region and internationally.
For more information about Joseph, please click through to his blog HERE.
Marksman
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Re: Configuring The Firefox Browser For OSINT

Post by Marksman »

Great article Joseph. Please share more of your knowledge and post more articles! :thumbsup: :beer:
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