Fake ChatGPT Chrome Extension Hijacking Facebook Accounts for Malicious Advertising
Mar 13, 2023
Browser Security / Artificial Intelligence
A fake ChatGPT-branded Chrome browser extension has been found to come with capabilities to hijack Facebook accounts and create rogue admin accounts, highlighting one of the different methods cyber criminals are using to distribute malware. "By hijacking high-profile Facebook business accounts, the threat actor creates an elite army of Facebook bots and a malicious paid media apparatus," Guardio Labs researcher Nati Tal said in a technical report. "This allows it to push Facebook paid ads at the expense of its victims in a self-propagating worm-like manner." The "Quick access to Chat GPT" extension, which is said to have attracted 2,000 installations per day since March 3, 2023, has since been pulled by Google from the Chrome Web Store as of March 9, 2023. The browser add-on is promoted through Facebook-sponsored posts, and while it offers the ability to connect to the ChatGPT service, it's also engineered to surreptitiously harvest cookies and