Firefox Will Warn Users About Previously Breached Websites

Mozilla engineers have announced a new notification system for Firefox that will alert users when they visit websites that have previously suffered data breaches. This system relies on data from the aggregator Have I Been Pwned?, which indexes publicly available information about breaches and allows users to check if they have been affected by any incidents.

Although the project is still in its early stages, the code is already available on GitHub. Currently, this solution has not yet been integrated into the browser itself, but works as a separate add-on for Firefox. Anyone interested can already see how the new system works, but it requires the Firefox Developer Edition.

At this stage, the system notifies users when they visit any site from a publicly available list of resources that have previously been affected by data breaches. As shown in the screenshot below, the notification window contains a special field where users can enter their email address. Currently, this field does not perform any function, but in the future, it is planned that users will be able to quickly check if their personal information was compromised in an incident.

Australian cybersecurity expert and founder of Have I Been Pwned, Troy Hunt, told Bleeping Computer journalists that he is actively assisting Mozilla developers with the project. According to him, the notification system may still undergo some changes, but the main idea will remain the same: notifications about previously compromised sites will be displayed directly in the browser.