Downloads from archive.org not always working

It’s not everyday your web browser hangs up on a download, but I discovered something weird today.

I was being a little nostalgic and so was looking up a great old program called Netbus. It’s a remote access tool that you can use for nefarious reasons, or you can just have a little bit of fun with your friends over a local network… the latter of, which happened in highschool – long before virus scanners picked up on this kind of software.

So today, I discovered that the latest version of Firefox (91.0.2 (64-bit)) will actually pause/halt a download if it comes from archive.org

I was browsing this link https://web.archive.org/web/20040716141216/http://trojaner-und-sicherheit.de/TschiTschi/netbus_eng.htm from ‘the good old days’.

Here’s what Firefox it did for me:

Oh look, a strange blue icon… right click on it?

Yep, a strange menu…

Wow, and even stranger menu.

So, while I understand why Firefox may want to do this, anyone who is using this site should know exactly what they are doing and downloading – that’s why we use it… to get old stuff.

Anyway.

Onwards and upwards. Time to step back in time.