messed something up real bad

You see me power-deleting Edge (including WebView) in the video, which is obviously a bad idea. This is a somewhat experimental setup I have so I don’t mind screwing things up a little bit.

malware

Unlikely. I follow very strict precautions. I cannot afford to have malware on top of my existing computer trouble.

I don’t disagree with you. I could have still messed up in a subtle way but at least the consequences don’t seem to be too serious.

Anyway, I don’t think it’s (third party) malware (that is, not by me or Microsoft) for another reason: viruses and trojans are not what they used to be. Unlike the 1990s, you won’t find much modern malware that does nothing but annoys the user (corporations, other users and freeware vendors do it plenty). People do it fir profit and they make adware, ransomware and cryptostealers, not some script kiddie’s batch file in the Startup folder that opens all executables in System32 simultaneously.

When Firefox started opening several blank tabs every second, I immediately knew it wasn’t malware but a misconfiguration: turns out it was trying to open a PDF in itself. I think this is another little mistake I made.

That’s clearly misconfiguration, not malware. Do you think modern malware would do obvious shit like this? I checked all installers on VirusTotal and most were FOSS, too.

Anyway, I know removing Edge can do weird stuff, it disabled biometric login on another PC.

The computer is not high-stakes, I don’t do personal stuff there and this is mild annoyance at worst. I’ll have ESET check the drive and reset Edge-related config.

Did you a: make sure to verify the code before running it on your computer making double sure theres no suspicious code in your text editor of choice or did you just do : b run the file on your computer and give it unfeathered access to your computer I’m assuming you did b because this is what i and most people even a good chunk of linux users would do in this scenario even then I at least make sure to scan doublely suspious files in my AV of choice before actually running it on my system

In a way what you do proves vendors like MS or Apple right in doing what they do, btw. They lock systems down to prevent average users from fucking up their systems with stuff they download from the internet.

Forcing a specific browser (see Apple just enforcing it all be safari) to prevent the user getting around security checks you can build relying on that one browser is just one step of that.

And every time someone blindly shoots themselves in the foot with a tool then tries to blame the company for what they themselves did wrong, the number used in meetings to justify more programmer time spent on locking it all down goes up by 1.

Duh. To be honest, should have checked before making the post.
Are you WestEnd?

That’s exactly what Microsoft did in the 1990s after an antitrust lawsuit for hindering free browser selection: integrated Internet Explorer into Explorer to have an excuse for having it preinstalled.

The EU is taking similar steps but I tgink Edge WebView will stay essential. Removing it on a laptop broke biometrics (aka Windows Hello: fingerprint sensor and face recognition) and I had to use a restore point. Seems sketchy to use a browser engine for essential security features – at this point, I would hope I had triggered some OS tamper-detection because the alternative is an OS whose login system is infected with an unpopular browser not because it enhances security but out of spite, and I don’t think exploiting legal loopholes leads to most secure solutions.

That’s what 1990s malware does. Modern malware either shows its own ads in your face (adware) or is stealthy while it mines crypto, exfiltrates your passwords / credit card info or encrypts all personal files.

You’re like WestEnd in this thread. Don’t take ot personally, I don’t blame you for the confusion, there is a lot of misleading media about malware behavior.

your web browser

That would be Firefox, and it works fine.