Google rolls back reCaptcha update to fix Firefox issue

Google rolled back a recent release after a bug prevented the reCaptcha capture script from working on Firefox for Windows.

Yesterday, BleepingComputer received multiple reports that reCaptcha is no longer working in the latest version of Mozilla Firefox. This issue has also been reported in:twitterandreddit.

BleepingComputer tested reCaptcha on our devices and found that the service no longer works in Firefox. Instead, the reCaptcha prompt displays an infinitely rotating circle instead of going through the normal capture routine, as shown below.

according toMozilla bug reportthe issue was related to reCaptcha’s dark mode detection routine in Firefox on Windows.

The script tried to change the background color of the div using document.body.removeChildHowever, since the script is loaded in the HTML head, the DOM has not yet been loaded and document.body is not available, resulting in a script error.

As a temporary workaround, users can change their browser’s user agent to the user agent for Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome and reCaptcha should work again.

Mozilla Firefox Software EngineerDennis SchubertGoogle acknowledged the bug and said it was a problem with the script, not the browser, and was working on a fix.

“Yes, Google has published a fix. It seems to work in some internal testing on multiple continents, but we’re leaving this bug open until everyone has confirmed it’s fixed.” I’ll keep it.”Schubert posted.

An hour later, Google reverted the script to an earlier version and fixed the bug for Firefox users.

meanwhilesome were fastTo conclude that this was intentional on Google’s part, it seems like a mistake that was quickly resolved.