Last month, South China Morning Post announced that Google said it removed more than 70 of the malicious add-ons from its official Chrome Web Store after being alerted by researchers last month.
The newly discovered spyware attacked users through 32 million downloads of extensions to Google’s market-leading Chrome web browser. Those free extensions siphoned off browsing history and data that provided credentials for access to internal business tools.
Based on the number of downloads, it was the most far-reaching malicious Chrome store campaign to date, according to Awake co-founder and chief scientist Gary Golomb.
The extensions were designed to avoid detection by antivirus companies or security software that evaluates the reputations of web domains, Awake’s Golomb said.
If someone used the browser to surf the web on a home computer, instead of a corporate network, they are likely to reach the malicious versions of the websites.
It shows how attackers can use extremely simple methods to hide, in this case, thousands of malicious domains. Thus, we should never let our guard down in protecting our cybersafety.
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