Over 300 Malicious Chrome Extensions Caught Leaking or Stealing User Data

Over 300 Malicious Chrome Extensions Caught Leaking or Stealing User Data

Briefly

"Security researchers have discovered more than 300 Chrome extensions that leak browser data, spy on their users, or outright steal users' data. Research focused on the analysis of network traffic generated by Chrome extensions has uncovered 287 applications transmitting the user's browsing history or search engine results pages (SERP). Some of them, security researcher Q Continuum explains, would essentially expose the data to unsecured networks, while others would send it to collection servers, either due to intended functionality, for monetization purposes, or with malicious intent."

"The extensions have over 37.4 million users, the researcher says. Of these, roughly 27.2 million users installed 153 extensions that were confirmed to leak browser history upon installation. Q Continuum, who also flagged over 200 additional extensions as suspicious due to shared author details with the data-leaking ones, observed four scrapers connecting to the honeypot set up for the research. Based on the observations, the researcher believes that a data broker rather than extension developers might be directly involved in the monetization of these applications."