Detect console event with javascript - javascript

I am trying to detect when an HBO Go movie has completed using javascript. Unfortunately, HBO Go uses Flash, and I have no Flash experience.
I noticed that when the movie ends, the Chrome javascript console shows this:
00:02:30:0596 TimeEvent.COMPLETE
(anonymous function) # VM12786:1
I followed VM12786:1 and found this:
try { __flash__toXML(console.error("00:02:30:0596 TimeEvent.COMPLETE")) ; } catch (e) { "<exception>" + e + "</exception>"; }
I'm not quite sure what either of these mean. Can someone briefly explain it? I have extensively googled, but haven't found anything that I understand.
And, is there any way that I can detect with javascript or jQuery that this has been triggered?

Here's a briefing on those JS bits:
try {
__flash__toXML(console.error("00:02:30:0596 TimeEvent.COMPLETE"));
} catch (e) {
"<exception>" + e + "</exception>";
}
The __flash__toXML function is a mechanism to allow the Flash program to communicate with the webpage via JavaScript (brief explanation here, unrelated article). It seems like that snippet is part of a larger section that handles the video ending event.
The weird stringy thing seems like a useless piece of code that is just there as a placeholder, but I would need to look at the context to understand it better. As it is, it does nothing.
Here's my answer to your question:
Unfortunately, there's no event you can capture for console actions directly. You would need to replace the functions with your own that trigger a custom event, and then handle that event. This article explains the process excellently. You would need to modify the internal intercept function to trigger an event on the main window, which you can handle in the traditional ways:
$(window).trigger("myapp.console.log");
Note: This may not work for content scripts, but that's advanced and depends on implementation. If you are using something injected into the browser, replacing the function will only affect the content script's sandbox.

I learned on StackOverflow that you can hijack the console functions, as in the example, where I've added an alert to the console.error function.
var conerr = console.error;
console.error = function()
{
alert("console error: " + arguments[0]); /* do stuff here */
return conerr.apply(console, arguments);
}
setTimeout(function() {console.error("00:02:30:0596 TimeEvent.COMPLETE");}, 1000);

Related

How to override the crowd-html submit button to include additional data

I'm working on a fairly simple form using crowd-html elements, which makes everything very simple. As part of our study, we want to see how workers interact with the form, so we have a bunch of basic JS logging. That is all prepared as a JSON and the idea is to log it using AWS API Gateway and AWS Lambda. The code all seems to work in unit tests, but not in the real form. I am trying to do this:
document.querySelector('crowd-form').onsubmit = function (e) {
if (!validateForm()) {
window.alert("Please check the form carefully, it isn't filled out completely!");
e.preventDefault();
} else {
let event_data = {
'specific_scroll_auditor': auditor_scrolled_pixels_specific.submit_callable(),
'specific_clicks_auditor': auditor_clicks_specific.submit_callable(),
'mouse_movements_total': auditor_mouse_movement_total.submit_callable(),
'on_focus_time': auditor_on_focus_time.submit_callable(),
'total_task_time': auditor_total_task_time.submit_callable(),
'focus_changes': auditor_focus_changes.submit_callable()
};
log_client_event('auditors', event_data);
post_event_log()
}
}
Note that the validation bit works, but the logging does not. I've tested post_event_log() on it's own, and that works just fine, so it seems like either 1) for some reason I never get to that else clause, or 2) the submission happens more quickly than I can call the logging functions. (but why, since the validation works?)
I also tried this, borrowed from the turkey code (https://github.com/CuriousG102/turkey) which was our inspiration.
$(window).ready(function () {
window.onbeforeunload = function () {
let event_data = {
'specific_scroll_auditor': auditor_scrolled_pixels_specific.submit_callable(),
'specific_clicks_auditor': auditor_clicks_specific.submit_callable(),
'mouse_movements_total': auditor_mouse_movement_total.submit_callable(),
'on_focus_time': auditor_on_focus_time.submit_callable(),
'total_task_time': auditor_total_task_time.submit_callable(),
'focus_changes': auditor_focus_changes.submit_callable()
};
log_client_event('auditors', event_data);
post_event_log()
}
});
That also doesn't work. I would prefer to do this in some simple way like what I have above, rather than completely rewrite the submit function, but maybe I have to?
your custom UI is placed inside a sandboxed iFrame by Ground Truth. It does that only for the real job, and not for previews (you're code might work while previewing the UI from AWS Console). The sandbox attribute on the iFrame goes like this
sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms"
Refer https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_iframe_sandbox.asp for descriptions. Ajax calls are blocked regardless of the presence of allow-same-origin (not that you could change it in any way). See for a thorough explanation IFRAME sandbox attribute is blocking AJAX calls
This example might help.
It updates the onSubmit function to do some pre-submit validations.
https://github.com/aws-samples/amazon-sagemaker-ground-truth-task-uis/blob/master/images/keypoint-additional-answer-validation.liquid.html
Hope this helps. Let us know if not.
Thank you,
Amazon Mechanical Turk

CasperJS - using fill() vs evaluate() vs sendKeys()

I'm learning CasperJS and have been able to login to a website using fill() but haven't been able to using this.evaluate() or this.sendKeys()
What am I doing wrong with this.evaluate() & this.sendKeys()?
This works:
casper.then(function() {
this.fill('form[class="login-form"]', {
'session_key': 'username',
'session_password': 'password'
}, true);
});
However, neither of these do:
casper.then(function() {
this.evaluate(function(username, password) {
document.querySelector('input#login-email').value = username;
document.querySelector('input#login-password').value = password;
document.querySelector('input[value="Sign in"]').click();
}, 'username', 'password');
})
or
casper.then(function() {
this.sendKeys('input#login-email', 'username');
this.sendKeys('input#login-password', 'password');
this.click('input[value="Sign in"]')
})
Since your question is more general than specific, I will try to answer in the same vein.
fill and fillSelectors are there to quickly fill simple forms.
If you have javascript heavy websites, with events being triggered on actions, then you have SendKeys, which will try to trigger those events as they go.
Finally, if SendKeys does not do the job, you can always go with evaluate and trigger those events manually. If you open your browser console and inspect elements you want to make action on, you will see the events attached to them. From there, you can see if they are DOM events or JQuery events, so you can use document.querySelector or $ accordingly. Before coding anything, know that if you jump to your browser javascript console, any code that you execute there will be what you will end up having in your evaluate scope ; You can quickly test your code in your browser before applying it to your script.
I did not go in details, I just went through the surface of "fill() vs evaluate() vs sendKeys()" with my personal experience but to answer your question specifically, we do not have the page HTML so it is hard to tell. There would be many reasons why SendKeys would not work but not evaluate. In your evaluate scope, the selectors might be wrong or an event is missing.
Finally, as Artjom mentioned, for clicking it's always best to go with casper.click(selector)

How to edit console using javascript [duplicate]

So apparently because of the recent scams, the developer tools is exploited by people to post spam and even used to "hack" accounts. Facebook has blocked the developer tools, and I can't even use the console.
How did they do that?? One Stack Overflow post claimed that it is not possible, but Facebook has proven them wrong.
Just go to Facebook and open up the developer tools, type one character into the console, and this warning pops up. No matter what you put in, it will not get executed.
How is this possible?
They even blocked auto-complete in the console:
I'm a security engineer at Facebook and this is my fault. We're testing this for some users to see if it can slow down some attacks where users are tricked into pasting (malicious) JavaScript code into the browser console.
Just to be clear: trying to block hackers client-side is a bad idea in general;
this is to protect against a specific social engineering attack.
If you ended up in the test group and are annoyed by this, sorry.
I tried to make the old opt-out page (now help page) as simple as possible while still being scary enough to stop at least some of the victims.
The actual code is pretty similar to #joeldixon66's link; ours is a little more complicated for no good reason.
Chrome wraps all console code in
with ((console && console._commandLineAPI) || {}) {
<code goes here>
}
... so the site redefines console._commandLineAPI to throw:
Object.defineProperty(console, '_commandLineAPI',
{ get : function() { throw 'Nooo!' } })
This is not quite enough (try it!), but that's the
main trick.
Epilogue: The Chrome team decided that defeating the console from user-side JS was a bug and fixed the issue, rendering this technique invalid. Afterwards, additional protection was added to protect users from self-xss.
I located the Facebook's console buster script using Chrome developer tools. Here is the script with minor changes for readability. I have removed the bits that I could not understand:
Object.defineProperty(window, "console", {
value: console,
writable: false,
configurable: false
});
var i = 0;
function showWarningAndThrow() {
if (!i) {
setTimeout(function () {
console.log("%cWarning message", "font: 2em sans-serif; color: yellow; background-color: red;");
}, 1);
i = 1;
}
throw "Console is disabled";
}
var l, n = {
set: function (o) {
l = o;
},
get: function () {
showWarningAndThrow();
return l;
}
};
Object.defineProperty(console, "_commandLineAPI", n);
Object.defineProperty(console, "__commandLineAPI", n);
With this, the console auto-complete fails silently while statements typed in console will fail to execute (the exception will be logged).
References:
Object.defineProperty
Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor
Chrome's console.log function (for tips on formatting output)
I couldn't get it to trigger that on any page. A more robust version of this would do it:
window.console.log = function(){
console.error('The developer console is temp...');
window.console.log = function() {
return false;
}
}
console.log('test');
To style the output: Colors in JavaScript console
Edit Thinking #joeldixon66 has the right idea: Disable JavaScript execution from console « ::: KSpace :::
Besides redefining console._commandLineAPI,
there are some other ways to break into InjectedScriptHost on WebKit browsers, to prevent or alter the evaluation of expressions entered into the developer's console.
Edit:
Chrome has fixed this in a past release. - which must have been before February 2015, as I created the gist at that time
So here's another possibility. This time we hook in, a level above, directly into InjectedScript rather than InjectedScriptHost as opposed to the prior version.
Which is kind of nice, as you can directly monkey patch InjectedScript._evaluateAndWrap instead of having to rely on InjectedScriptHost.evaluate as that gives you more fine-grained control over what should happen.
Another pretty interesting thing is, that we can intercept the internal result when an expression is evaluated and return that to the user instead of the normal behavior.
Here is the code, that does exactly that, return the internal result when a user evaluates something in the console.
var is;
Object.defineProperty(Object.prototype,"_lastResult",{
get:function(){
return this._lR;
},
set:function(v){
if (typeof this._commandLineAPIImpl=="object") is=this;
this._lR=v;
}
});
setTimeout(function(){
var ev=is._evaluateAndWrap;
is._evaluateAndWrap=function(){
var res=ev.apply(is,arguments);
console.log();
if (arguments[2]==="completion") {
//This is the path you end up when a user types in the console and autocompletion get's evaluated
//Chrome expects a wrapped result to be returned from evaluateAndWrap.
//You can use `ev` to generate an object yourself.
//In case of the autocompletion chrome exptects an wrapped object with the properties that can be autocompleted. e.g.;
//{iGetAutoCompleted: true}
//You would then go and return that object wrapped, like
//return ev.call (is, '', '({test:true})', 'completion', true, false, true);
//Would make `test` pop up for every autocompletion.
//Note that syntax as well as every Object.prototype property get's added to that list later,
//so you won't be able to exclude things like `while` from the autocompletion list,
//unless you wou'd find a way to rewrite the getCompletions function.
//
return res; //Return the autocompletion result. If you want to break that, return nothing or an empty object
} else {
//This is the path where you end up when a user actually presses enter to evaluate an expression.
//In order to return anything as normal evaluation output, you have to return a wrapped object.
//In this case, we want to return the generated remote object.
//Since this is already a wrapped object it would be converted if we directly return it. Hence,
//`return result` would actually replicate the very normal behaviour as the result is converted.
//to output what's actually in the remote object, we have to stringify it and `evaluateAndWrap` that object again.`
//This is quite interesting;
return ev.call (is, null, '(' + JSON.stringify (res) + ')', "console", true, false, true)
}
};
},0);
It's a bit verbose, but I thought I put some comments into it
So normally, if a user, for example, evaluates [1,2,3,4] you'd expect the following output:
After monkeypatching InjectedScript._evaluateAndWrap evaluating the very same expression, gives the following output:
As you see the little-left arrow, indicating output, is still there, but this time we get an object. Where the result of the expression, the array [1,2,3,4] is represented as an object with all its properties described.
I recommend trying to evaluate this and that expression, including those that generate errors. It's quite interesting.
Additionally, take a look at the is - InjectedScriptHost - object. It provides some methods to play with and get a bit of insight into the internals of the inspector.
Of course, you could intercept all that information and still return the original result to the user.
Just replace the return statement in the else path by a console.log (res) following a return res. Then you'd end up with the following.
End of Edit
This is the prior version which was fixed by Google. Hence not a possible way anymore.
One of it is hooking into Function.prototype.call
Chrome evaluates the entered expression by calling its eval function with InjectedScriptHost as thisArg
var result = evalFunction.call(object, expression);
Given this, you can listen for the thisArg of call being evaluate and get a reference to the first argument (InjectedScriptHost)
if (window.URL) {
var ish, _call = Function.prototype.call;
Function.prototype.call = function () { //Could be wrapped in a setter for _commandLineAPI, to redefine only when the user started typing.
if (arguments.length > 0 && this.name === "evaluate" && arguments [0].constructor.name === "InjectedScriptHost") { //If thisArg is the evaluate function and the arg0 is the ISH
ish = arguments[0];
ish.evaluate = function (e) { //Redefine the evaluation behaviour
throw new Error ('Rejected evaluation of: \n\'' + e.split ('\n').slice(1,-1).join ("\n") + '\'');
};
Function.prototype.call = _call; //Reset the Function.prototype.call
return _call.apply(this, arguments);
}
};
}
You could e.g. throw an error, that the evaluation was rejected.
Here is an example where the entered expression gets passed to a CoffeeScript compiler before passing it to the evaluate function.
Netflix also implements this feature
(function() {
try {
var $_console$$ = console;
Object.defineProperty(window, "console", {
get: function() {
if ($_console$$._commandLineAPI)
throw "Sorry, for security reasons, the script console is deactivated on netflix.com";
return $_console$$
},
set: function($val$$) {
$_console$$ = $val$$
}
})
} catch ($ignore$$) {
}
})();
They just override console._commandLineAPI to throw security error.
This is actually possible since Facebook was able to do it.
Well, not the actual web developer tools but the execution of Javascript in console.
See this: How does Facebook disable the browser's integrated Developer Tools?
This really wont do much though since there are other ways to bypass this type of client-side security.
When you say it is client-side, it happens outside the control of the server, so there is not much you can do about it. If you are asking why Facebook still does this, this is not really for security but to protect normal users that do not know javascript from running code (that they don't know how to read) into the console. This is common for sites that promise auto-liker service or other Facebook functionality bots after you do what they ask you to do, where in most cases, they give you a snip of javascript to run in console.
If you don't have as much users as Facebook, then I don't think there's any need to do what Facebook is doing.
Even if you disable Javascript in console, running javascript via address bar is still possible.
and if the browser disables javascript at address bar, (When you paste code to the address bar in Google Chrome, it deletes the phrase 'javascript:') pasting javascript into one of the links via inspect element is still possible.
Inspect the anchor:
Paste code in href:
Bottom line is server-side validation and security should be first, then do client-side after.
Chrome changed a lot since the times facebook could disable console...
As per March 2017 this doesn't work anymore.
Best you can do is disable some of the console functions, example:
if(!window.console) window.console = {};
var methods = ["log", "debug", "warn", "info", "dir", "dirxml", "trace", "profile"];
for(var i=0;i<methods.length;i++){
console[methods[i]] = function(){};
}
My simple way, but it can help for further variations on this subject.
List all methods and alter them to useless.
Object.getOwnPropertyNames(console).filter(function(property) {
return typeof console[property] == 'function';
}).forEach(function (verb) {
console[verb] =function(){return 'Sorry, for security reasons...';};
});
However, a better approach is to disable the developer tool from being opened in any meaningful way
(function() {
'use strict';
Object.getOwnPropertyNames(console).filter(function(property) {
return typeof console[property] == 'function';
}).forEach(function (verb) {
console[verb] =function(){return 'Sorry, for security reasons...';};
});
window.addEventListener('devtools-opened', ()=>{
// do some extra code if needed or ...
// maybe even delete the page, I still like to add redirect just in case
window.location.href+="#";
window.document.head.innerHTML="";
window.document.body.innerHTML="devtools, page is now cleared";
});
window.addEventListener('devtools-closed', ()=>{
// do some extra code if needed
});
let verifyConsole = () => {
var before = new Date().getTime();
debugger;
var after = new Date().getTime();
if (after - before > 100) { // user had to resume the script manually via opened dev tools
window.dispatchEvent(new Event('devtools-opened'));
}else{
window.dispatchEvent(new Event('devtools-closed'));
}
setTimeout(verifyConsole, 100);
}
verifyConsole();
})();
Internally devtools injects an IIFE named getCompletions into the page, called when a key is pressed inside the Devtools console.
Looking at the source of that function, it uses a few global functions which can be overwritten.
By using the Error constructor it's possible to get the call stack, which will include getCompletions when called by Devtools.
Example:
const disableDevtools = callback => {
const original = Object.getPrototypeOf;
Object.getPrototypeOf = (...args) => {
if (Error().stack.includes("getCompletions")) callback();
return original(...args);
};
};
disableDevtools(() => {
console.error("devtools has been disabled");
while (1);
});
an simple solution!
setInterval(()=>console.clear(),1500);
I have a simple way here:
window.console = function () {}
I would go along the way of:
Object.defineProperty(window, 'console', {
get: function() {
},
set: function() {
}
});
In Firefox it dosen't do that, since Firefox is a developer browser, I think since the command WEBGL_debug_renderer_info is deprecated in Firefox and will be removed. Please use RENDERER and the error Referrer Policy: Less restricted policies, including ‘no-referrer-when-downgrade’, ‘origin-when-cross-origin’ and ‘unsafe-url’, will be ignored soon for the cross-site request: https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v3/yS/r/XDDAHSZfaR6.js?_nc_x=Ij3Wp8lg5Kz.
This is not a security measure for weak code to be left unattended. Always get a permanent solution to weak code and secure your websites properly before implementing this strategy
The best tool by far according to my knowledge would be to add multiple javascript files that simply changes the integrity of the page back to normal by refreshing or replacing content. Disabling this developer tool would not be the greatest idea since bypassing is always in question since the code is part of the browser and not a server rendering, thus it could be cracked.
Should you have js file one checking for <element> changes on important elements and js file two and js file three checking that this file exists per period you will have full integrity restore on the page within the period.
Lets take an example of the 4 files and show you what I mean.
index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head id="mainhead">
<script src="ks.js" id="ksjs"></script>
<script src="mainfile.js" id="mainjs"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" id="style">
<meta id="meta1" name="description" content="Proper mitigation against script kiddies via Javascript" >
</head>
<body>
<h1 id="heading" name="dontdel" value="2">Delete this from console and it will refresh. If you change the name attribute in this it will also refresh. This is mitigating an attack on attribute change via console to exploit vulnerabilities. You can even try and change the value attribute from 2 to anything you like. If This script says it is 2 it should be 2 or it will refresh. </h1>
<h3>Deleting this wont refresh the page due to it having no integrity check on it</h3>
<p>You can also add this type of error checking on meta tags and add one script out of the head tag to check for changes in the head tag. You can add many js files to ensure an attacker cannot delete all in the second it takes to refresh. Be creative and make this your own as your website needs it.
</p>
<p>This is not the end of it since we can still enter any tag to load anything from everywhere (Dependent on headers etc) but we want to prevent the important ones like an override in meta tags that load headers. The console is designed to edit html but that could add potential html that is dangerous. You should not be able to enter any meta tags into this document unless it is as specified by the ks.js file as permissable. <br>This is not only possible with meta tags but you can do this for important tags like input and script. This is not a replacement for headers!!! Add your headers aswell and protect them with this method.</p>
</body>
<script src="ps.js" id="psjs"></script>
</html>
mainfile.js
setInterval(function() {
// check for existence of other scripts. This part will go in all other files to check for this file aswell.
var ksExists = document.getElementById("ksjs");
if(ksExists) {
}else{ location.reload();};
var psExists = document.getElementById("psjs");
if(psExists) {
}else{ location.reload();};
var styleExists = document.getElementById("style");
if(styleExists) {
}else{ location.reload();};
}, 1 * 1000); // 1 * 1000 milsec
ps.js
/*This script checks if mainjs exists as an element. If main js is not existent as an id in the html file reload!You can add this to all js files to ensure that your page integrity is perfect every second. If the page integrity is bad it reloads the page automatically and the process is restarted. This will blind an attacker as he has one second to disable every javascript file in your system which is impossible.
*/
setInterval(function() {
// check for existence of other scripts. This part will go in all other files to check for this file aswell.
var mainExists = document.getElementById("mainjs");
if(mainExists) {
}else{ location.reload();};
//check that heading with id exists and name tag is dontdel.
var headingExists = document.getElementById("heading");
if(headingExists) {
}else{ location.reload();};
var integrityHeading = headingExists.getAttribute('name');
if(integrityHeading == 'dontdel') {
}else{ location.reload();};
var integrity2Heading = headingExists.getAttribute('value');
if(integrity2Heading == '2') {
}else{ location.reload();};
//check that all meta tags stay there
var meta1Exists = document.getElementById("meta1");
if(meta1Exists) {
}else{ location.reload();};
var headExists = document.getElementById("mainhead");
if(headExists) {
}else{ location.reload();};
}, 1 * 1000); // 1 * 1000 milsec
ks.js
/*This script checks if mainjs exists as an element. If main js is not existent as an id in the html file reload! You can add this to all js files to ensure that your page integrity is perfect every second. If the page integrity is bad it reloads the page automatically and the process is restarted. This will blind an attacker as he has one second to disable every javascript file in your system which is impossible.
*/
setInterval(function() {
// check for existence of other scripts. This part will go in all other files to check for this file aswell.
var mainExists = document.getElementById("mainjs");
if(mainExists) {
}else{ location.reload();};
//Check meta tag 1 for content changes. meta1 will always be 0. This you do for each meta on the page to ensure content credibility. No one will change a meta and get away with it. Addition of a meta in spot 10, say a meta after the id="meta10" should also be covered as below.
var x = document.getElementsByTagName("meta")[0];
var p = x.getAttribute("name");
var s = x.getAttribute("content");
if (p != 'description') {
location.reload();
}
if ( s != 'Proper mitigation against script kiddies via Javascript') {
location.reload();
}
// This will prevent a meta tag after this meta tag # id="meta1". This prevents new meta tags from being added to your pages. This can be used for scripts or any tag you feel is needed to do integrity check on like inputs and scripts. (Yet again. It is not a replacement for headers to be added. Add your headers aswell!)
var lastMeta = document.getElementsByTagName("meta")[1];
if (lastMeta) {
location.reload();
}
}, 1 * 1000); // 1 * 1000 milsec
style.css
Now this is just to show it works on all files and tags aswell
#heading {
background-color:red;
}
If you put all these files together and build the example you will see the function of this measure. This will prevent some unforseen injections should you implement it correctly on all important elements in your index file especially when working with PHP.
Why I chose reload instead of change back to normal value per attribute is the fact that some attackers could have another part of the website already configured and ready and it lessens code amount. The reload will remove all the attacker's hard work and he will probably go play somewhere easier.
Another note: This could become a lot of code so keep it clean and make sure to add definitions to where they belong to make edits easy in future. Also set the seconds to your preferred amount as 1 second intervals on large pages could have drastic effects on older computers your visitors might be using

Accessing the window object in Firefox addon content script?

I can't seem to access the window object in a content script. Is this normal?
For example, this does nothing:
window.onload = function() {
console.log("Hello from the onload");
};
Instead, I have to use the unsafeWindow object.
unsafeWindow.onload = function() {
console.log("Hello from the onload");
};
I must be missing something simple right?
Don't use window.onload, instead write:
window.addEventListener("load", function() {
console.log("Hello from the onload");
}, false);
window.onload has the limitation that there can only be one event listener, setting a different listener replaces the existing one - that's already a reason why you should never use it. In case of the Add-on SDK things get more complicated because the content script has a different view of the DOM then the web page. So just use addEventListener.
Oh, and please don't use unsafeWindow - it is (as the name already says) inherently unsafe.
The window object available to you in a content script is actually a proxy - hence unsafeWindow works and window does not. I did some tests and document.addEventListener does not work either:
https://builder.addons.mozilla.org/package/150362/latest/
jQuery seems to work fine though, I imagine there is some magic they do to ensure that they fire no matter what.
The workaround is simply set contentScriptWhen to 'end' and run your code immediately - this should always work as the content script is attached when the document is finished loading.
I did log this bug regarding what I like to think of as the 'wtf?' aspect of this behaviour - I think the result is surprising to web developers and we should try to be less surprising:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=787063

Stopping infinite loops of alerts in Mozilla

This may be dumb question. But somehow this engaged me for sometime and after some basic research I couldn't find an answer.
I was learning JavaScript and a code I wrote had an error and has been outputting infinite loops of alerts. I tried the normal shortcuts like Ctrl + C and Ctrl + Z but they didn't work. So I was thinking if there is any solution to this other than ending the browser process (like by doing a Ctrl + Alt + Del).
There are workarounds, as #Sarfras mentions, but no magic button that'll save you. The F5 workaround is the best I know of.
If you are using firebug, I would suggest you look into using the log feature rather then alerts. Many people find this as a useful way of debugging.
http://getfirebug.com/logging
If you are using alert as a debugging method, I strongly suggest you use the firebug plugin.
With it, you can use console.debug("whatever message", whatever, values).
Otherwise, if your intent is to actually use a dialog message, you could use some of these dialogs rather than the browser's built-in dialogs. Besides being a standard way of showing messages, they are way nicer ;)
You can log errors without a specific browser, with a global array.
This method allows you to 'turn off' an infinite alert,
but still be able to read the error log.
var logErrors= true, errorLog= [];
function Yikes(str){
if(str.constructor==Error)str=str.message;
errorLog.push(str);
if(logErrors== true){
logErrors= confirm(str+'\n keep showing errors? ');
}
return true;
}
window.onerror=Yikes;
you can also use it around problem code,
to return values:
try{
d2= Date.fromUTCArray(D.slice(0, D.length));
}
catch(er){
return Yikes(er.message+', '+D);
}

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