Compatibility with Exploit protection on Windows

Firefox Firefox Last updated: 75% of users voted this helpful

Windows 10 (version 1709+), Windows Server (version 1803+) and Windows 11 come with a security feature named Exploit protection. Exploit protection includes a number of mitigations from the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) which reached end of support on July 31st, 2018.

While you can apply those mitigations to Firefox (i.e. firefox.exe), Mozilla recommends keeping the default settings of Exploit protection for firefox.exe. Since Microsoft can change the mitigation techniques at anytime, you may experience compatibility issues such as startup or sudden crashes or loss of functionality if you were to update from a working version.

Windows 10 Version 1709 Security Baseline from Microsoft contained an error which will make Firefox 100 unable to load any pages. Updated versions of Windows Security Baseline can be found here.

Known issues in older versions

  • Firefox had a startup crash due to the compatibility issues with EAF (Export Address Filtering) until version 73.
  • Firefox had a startup crash due to the compatibility issue with EAF+ until version 77.
  • Firefox fails to load any pages with outdated Exploit Protection settings.

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