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Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Encryption > and deselect "Use SSL 3.0" in the protocols area. I'm not too concerned about this sort of thing (if I was, I probably wouldn't be using Firefox 2 anyway), though I have just disabled SSL 3.0 because it looks like nothing uses it nowadays anyway.

Sure enough, that test website now says my browser isn't vulnerable to any stray POODLEs lurking in the interwebs (though I think the work involved in that attack would be far less than worthwhile for anyone looking at my internet data.

More so than that too, most web servers will hopefully disable SSL3 on their end. But also obviously as you mention,

Finally, that first web page you linked to doesn't work in Forefox 2 (it uses a later encryption method (probably TLS 1.2 or 1.1) that Firefox 2 doesn't support and for sume silly reason they haven't enabled TLS 1.0 as a fallback)

So if there's not a way to enable 1.1 or 1.2 then most sites are going to end up not working anyway. This is more an issue after the Snowden leaks because now more than ever are sites using HTTPS where as 3 year ago they wouldn't had unless they were a shopping/banking site. https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere/deploying-https (To be fair also, this is somewhat an issue with Dillo until it gets better HTTPS support http://www.dillo.org/FAQ.html#q12 )

As for those plugins. I'm not going to go through that web page, but the NoScript Download Page (https://noscript.net/getit) says under "Direct Download":

"Users of Firefox 2.0 and below are urged to upgrade their very unsafe browser. For those few who can't, latest legacy-compatible NoScript version is 1.10."

With a link to V. 1.10. So that's easy.

Yeah, at the very least having some version of Noscript would be a ton better than nothing. (thanks for that btw, I'll give it a try later)

AdBlock Edge is too new for Firefox 2.0 support, but AdBlock Plus which it's based on will work if you use the old V. 1.0.2 (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/versions/?page=2#version-1.0.2). Though funnilly enough, the Firefox website is now so broken with Firefox 2.0 that the download link doesn't seem to work.

Actually, the more I got thinking about it the more I'd try to avoid any version of Adblock for DSL. Adblock can be pretty cpu/ram heavy on modern machines at times. I think just Noscript would be the way to go.


All in all, there's probably also a ton of unpatched browser exploits that Bon Echo is vulnerable to as well. That, along with it being pretty draining on older system with little ram compared to Dillo. Like, I can easily run the latest Firefox on another system I have, and it's just a 500mhz AMD K6 III rig with 512mb ram- yet if you have a 83mhz Pentium (which is my DSL rig) then Bon Echo chugs until you close it. I mean, I get Bon Echo was never meant to be more than what it is, but I'm just wondering if it's worth the hassle these days. (but don't confuse me in saying it should be straight out scrapped altogether, I'm just thinking outloud of all the difficulties).

See: https://community.qualys.com/blogs/securitylabs/2014/10/15/ssl-3-is-dead-killed-by-the-poodle-attack

Here's a test: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/viewMyClient.html


Also here's some search engines to possibly add (particularly StartPage): https://prism-break.org/en/subcategories/gnu-linux-web-search/

And some addons: https://prism-break.org/en/subcategories/gnu-linux-web-browser-addons/ But I don't know if any of them would even work on Bon Echo. My thinking is that with Adblock Edge and Noscript especially, browsing would be a lot quicker on older machines that get hung up on scripts and ads. Not as fast as Dillo, but better than nothing. Just a thought, if it's even possible.

But the main thing is that SSL 3 should be disabled.

My plan is to use it for some of my amateur radio stuff. In particular, I am going to use it for 2 meter packet and running a 440 MHz repeater (though I've considered looking into modifying the transmit and receive boards and setting it up for the 222 MHz band).

Ah neat. You should stick some videos on Youtube of it.

What are your plans for your system? I'd like to know. DSL is really an awesome OS.

Pretty much just to keep it running. I want to pick up that DSL book on Amazon give that a look over. Personally, I just started really swapping over all my systems (except for my main, I need to get some SSDs to duel boot) with Linux cause of the post Snowden stuff. That, I'm just so tired of babysitting Windows installs, tracking down all the updates, etc. Scrubbed XP off an old box and threw Debian on once XP went End of Life. Then I got thinking about this system, I was just "why am I keeping a Win98 install?" so I threw DSL on it.

I used to like Puppy, but it has gotten to bloated for me in terms of a mini-distro.

Yeah, I could never get into Puppy.

There's test here: https://shellshocker.net/ (I tested DSL 4.11.rc2)

Not really a surprise as every Linux distro was pretty much affected by this. If it can be patched though, it should.

Here's a Wilders thread covering Shellshock: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/major-bash-vulnerability-affects-linux-unix-mac-os-x-shell-shock.368559/

[Specs:]

Specs: It's a AST Advantage Adventure 6066d. So 1992, or 1993 manufactured. It's been upgraded since it was first bought, but the mainboard (some AST made thing) is still original. Then I think it was back in 2009 or so I bought up a bunch of parts while I could still find them easy enough (250 watt PSU, rounded IDE cables, a ISA Ethernet card to get online, etc).

CPU: Pentium Overdrive 83Mhz which is a 586 made to fit socket 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_OverDrive
HD: 540mb (but because of the old 528mb BIOS bug limit, I can't use the full drive, see http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-4.html )
Ram: 36mb EDO (maxed out as far as what the mainboard will take)
GPU: ATI MACH64
ISA Ethernet card

Did most of the final upgrades back in 2009, which was when I had actually first put DSL on it to try out. The biggest hassle was partitioning the drive while not knowing about the BIOS hard drive limit, and that the old cd-rom drive wasn't cut out for reading Linux live cds (which I just swapped out with a faster cdrom). Played around with it for a week or so, then decided to stick on the Unofficial Windows 98 SE Service Pack for nostalgia (which is a community made, mostly dead project that was aimed to get the most out of an End of Life Win98).

Long story short, the rig just sat around for a few more years powered off, and only lately decided again to get Linux going on it after being more comfortable having swapped most my other computers to a Linux distro of some sort.

Looked over: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Linux_distribution
Most if not all of them are aimed at mid-late 90s rigs at a bare minimum, wanting at least a few hundred mb of ram.  Tried TinyCore, but it wanted "at least 46 MB of RAM" and I came up a bit short.

Also tried https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KolibriOS which isn't Linux but an open source OS "written completely in assembly". Wouldn't load and I don't blame it at all (I think my rig may just be too old)

So I just came back to DSL, grabbed the 4.11.rc2, threw it on a cd, booted it with a floppy (cause no cd boot on old mainboards) and it loaded right up. Install it to the hard drive, done. Browses the web with Dillo a thousand times faster than Win98 with IE.


I don't know. Just thought I'd share it with you guys to, at the very least, still show there's people around that would rather hold onto old rigs they grew up on than to bin them at a e-waste recycling center or something. Over spoiled today with SSDs, multi-cores clocked over 5ghz, high end ATI/nvidia graphic cards- people forget what these old machines can do. Not to say I don't use a "gaming" rig as my main everyday system, but I love playing around all types of systems. Anyway, yeah, DSL is the only available life support for my old system.  It just didn't mind how little ram I have and it runs pretty great.