My roommates and I were joking the other day because, upon a fresh installation of WindowsXP/Vista, you have to open Internet Explorer at least once in order to download a better browser (Firefox being my preferred choice). Wouldn’t it be funny if, during that one-time run, IE got exploited and your system was ‘pwned’ (as the kids say these days)? There are a number of possible ways this could happen, some of which can’t be blamed on Microsoft. Fancy that. Maybe you’re on a wireless network and someone’s playing the MITM card. Microsoft’s DNS servers could be compromised and, since the default home page of IE is located on a microsoft.com domain, you could be redirected to a malicious site. Both of these can’t be blamed on the (lack of) security in Windows or Internet Explorer, no matter how much I wish they were. ;P My point is, there are tons of things that could go wrong during this one-time run. Use your imagination.

I’d like to give the spiel about how I like a good challenge, but I don’t. I’m lazy and bored; the latter reason being why I’m writing this post at 2am. So I fired up my pirated copy of VMware Fusion and created WindowsXP and Vista virtual machines. Here are a few steps that can get Firefox installed on your machine without ever starting Internet Explorer. Praise be to the FTP.

Open a command prompt.

• WindowsXP: Click Start → Run. Enter ‘cmd.exe’ and click OK.

• Vista: Click the Start button. In the Start Search box (at the bottom), enter ‘cmd’ and press Enter.

On both versions, you can just hit Win+R and enter ‘cmd.exe’ in the dialog.

It doesn’t matter what directory you’re in when the command prompt opens, since we’ll run the Firefox installation, then remove it, all from the command line. Type this shit:

C:\SomeShit> ftp releases.mozilla.org

After you’re connected, use ‘anonymous’ as the username. The password doesn’t matter; I usually just use something like ‘fake@email.com’. Now type this shit:

ftp> cd pub
ftp> cd mozilla.org/firefox/releases/latest-3.0/win32/en-US
ftp> dir

Don’t worry if you get an error when you try ‘cd pub’. Some mirrors drop you directly in the public directory, others don’t. Either way, the second ‘cd’ command should work. You should see a couple of files. As of this writing, the latest version of Firefox is 3.0.1. Now we just download whatever .exe file is in that listing. More typies:

ftp> bin
ftp> hash
ftp> get "Firefox Setup 3.0.1.exe" 

The ‘bin’ changes the FTP client to binary mode and the ‘hash’ will display a progress bar of # signs as the file is being downloaded. Quotes are needed around the filename, since there’s some spaces and shit. Once the download is complete, type ‘quit’ to disconnect. After disconnecting, all that’s needed to run the setup is to enter the downloaded filename (in quotes). You can use tab completion to auto-fill the filename. Looks something like this:

C:\SomeShit> Fire<TAB><Enter>

Once the Firefox install finishes, pop back to the command prompt window and remove it:

C:\SomeShit> del Fire<TAB><Enter>

And there you have it. Firefox is installed without the need to run Internet Explorer. Now you can start worrying about the insecurities of Firefox, instead of that silly blue E. Practical? Fuck no. Bored? Fuck yes.