Mozilla has officially confirmed that it will continue supporting Manifest V2 extensions alongside Manifest V3, ensuring that users retain the freedom of choice within its browser.
Manifest V3, a framework developed by Google for browser extensions, aims to enhance security by imposing restrictions on network requests and remote content loading. However, these changes have significantly hindered the functionality of certain extensions, particularly ad blockers, diminishing their effectiveness.
As Manifest V3 has been progressively implemented, incompatible extensions have been systematically disabled, depriving users of familiar and essential functionalities. One of the most notable casualties of this transition was the removal of uBlock Origin from Chrome.
Mozilla has reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining Manifest V2 for the foreseeable future, pledging to support the blockingWebRequest and declarativeNetRequest APIs, thereby preserving the functionality of extensions like uBlock Origin. The company underscored this stance by citing “Principle 5” of its manifesto, which asserts that users should have the autonomy to shape their internet experience according to their own preferences.
Meanwhile, security researcher Vladimir Palant recently discovered numerous malicious extensions in the Chrome Web Store that have circumvented Google’s ban on executing remote code, a restriction introduced with Manifest V3. This loophole has enabled threat actors to continue covert operations, including user surveillance, ad fraud, and the evasion of web-based security controls.
