There’s probably very little point in checking too often, but you can make up your mind about how often you want your browser to poll for updates to your extensions. The new setting won’t come in effect until after Firefox next checks for updates (up to 24 hours.) You can force it to take effect immediately by going to the extensions manager in Firefox, clicking the settings/gear icon, and then click on Check for updates.

Double-click on the entry and change the value from “ 86400” (24 hours in seconds) to “ 14400” (4 hours in seconds.).

Accept the warning, and search for “ ” in the list of options.

Type in about:config in Firefox’s address field, and press Enter.

The following steps will show you how to increase the update frequency from once to six times per day:

That is an unacceptable long time window to leave such critical issues unpatched.įirefox allows its users great control over most functionality, including the auto-update system for extensions and add-ons.

The extension had been released some nine hours earlier. When I checked on six systems where I’ve LastPass installed in Firefox, only one of the systems had received and install the updated LastPass extension. On the other hand, Firefox only checks for updates once per day. Google Chrome checks for updates every five hours by default, which seems like a reasonable default. This highlights how important it’s to keep your browser extensions up to date with the latest security patches.

This week, three vulnerabilities were discovered and quickly fixed in various versions of the LastPass extension that allowed an attacking website to execute arbitrary code or steal a complete copy of the user’s password keychain. You may want to configure your browser to check for extension updates more often than once per day if you’re using security-critical browser extensions like the popular LastPass password manager.

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