Malicious Chrome extensions with 75M installs removed from Web Store
02-Jun-23
32 harmful extensions that could change search results and push spam or unwanted adverts have been deleted by Google from the Chrome Web Store. They have received 75 million downloads all together. To protect users from the harmful behaviour that was concealed in obfuscated code to deliver the payloads, the extensions included legal functionality.
The PDF Toolbox extension, which has had 2 million downloads from the Chrome Web Store, was examined by cybersecurity expert Wladimir Palant, who discovered that it contained code that was misrepresented as an extension API wrapper.
