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Google has made several new announcements for its Chrome Web Store that aims at making Chrome extensions more secure and transparent to its users. Over a couple of years, we have seen a significant rise in malicious extensions that appear to offer useful functionalities, while running hidden malicious scripts in the background without the user's knowledge. However, the best part is that Google is aware of the issues and has proactively been working to change the way its Chrome web browser handles extensions. Earlier this year, Google banned extensions using cryptocurrency mining scripts and then in June, the company also disabled inline installation of Chrome extensions completely. The company has also been using machine learning technologies to detect and block malicious extensions. To take a step further, Google announced Monday five major changes that give users more control over certain permissions, enforces security measures, as well as makes the ecosystem more t...

Google removed 500 malicious Chrome extensions from its Web Store after they found to inject malicious ads and siphon off user browsing data to servers under the control of attackers. These extensions were part of a malvertising and ad-fraud campaign that's been operating at least since January 2019, although evidence points out the possibility that the actor behind the scheme may have been active since 2017. The findings come as part of a joint investigation by security researcher Jamila Kaya and Cisco-owned Duo Security, which unearthed 70 Chrome Extensions with over 1.7 million installations. Upon sharing the discovery privately with Google, the company went on to identify 430 more problematic browser extensions, all of which have since been deactivated. "The prominence of malvertising as an attack vector will continue to rise as long as tracking-based advertising remains ubiquitous, and particularly if users remain underserved by protection mechanisms," sa...

Two widely used Adblocker Google Chrome extensions , posing as the original — AdBlock and uBlock Origin — extensions on Chrome Web Store, have been caught stuffing cookies in the web browser of millions of users to generate affiliate income from referral schemes fraudulently. There's no doubt web extensions add a lot of useful features to web browsers, making your online experience great and aiding productivity, but at the same time, they also pose huge threats to both your privacy and security. Being the most over-sighted weakest link in the browser security model, extensions sit between the browser application and the Internet — from where they look for the websites you visit and subsequently can intercept, modify, and block any requests, based on the functionalities they have been designed for. Apart from the extensions which are purposely created with malicious intent , in recent years we have also seen some of the most popular legitimate Chrome and Firefox extensions g...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious Google Chrome extension that's designed to steal data associated with Meta Business Suite and Facebook Business Manager. The extension, named CL Suite by @CLMasters (ID: jkphinfhmfkckkcnifhjiplhfoiefffl), is marketed as a way to scrape Meta Business Suite data, remove verification pop-ups, and generate two-factor authentication (2FA) codes. The extension has 33 users as of writing. It was first uploaded to the Chrome Web Store on March 1, 2025. However, the browser add-on also exfiltrates TOTP codes for Facebook and Meta Business accounts, Business Manager contact lists, and analytics data to infrastructure controlled by the threat actor, Socket said. "The extension requests broad access to meta.com and facebook.com and claims in its privacy policy that 2FA secrets and Business Manager data remain local," security researcher Kirill Boychenko said . "In practice, the code transmits TOTP seeds and current one-t...

A new attack campaign has targeted known Chrome browser extensions, leading to at least 35 extensions being compromised and exposing over 2.6 million users to data exposure and credential theft. The attack targeted publishers of browser extensions on the Chrome Web Store via a phishing campaign and used their access permissions to insert malicious code into legitimate extensions in order to steal cookies and user access tokens. The first company to shed light the campaign was cybersecurity firm Cyberhaven, one of whose employees was targeted by a phishing attack on December 24, allowing the threat actors to publish a malicious version of the extension. On December 27, Cyberhaven disclosed that a threat actor compromised its browser extension and injected malicious code to communicate with an external command-and-control (C&C) server located on the domain cyberhavenext[.]pro, download additional configuration files, and exfiltrate user data. The phishing email, which purported...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered two new malicious extensions on the Chrome Web Store that are designed to exfiltrate OpenAI ChatGPT and DeepSeek conversations alongside browsing data to servers under the attackers' control. The names of the extensions, which collectively have over 900,000 users, are below - Chat GPT for Chrome with GPT-5, Claude Sonnet & DeepSeek AI (ID: fnmihdojmnkclgjpcoonokmkhjpjechg, 600,000 users) AI Sidebar with Deepseek, ChatGPT, Claude, and more. (ID: inhcgfpbfdjbjogdfjbclgolkmhnooop, 300,000 users) The findings come weeks after Urban VPN Proxy , another extension with millions of installations on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, was caught spying on users' chats with artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots. This tactic of using browser extensions to stealthily capture AI conversations has been codenamed Prompt Poaching by Secure Annex. The two newly identified extensions "were found exfiltrating user conversations and all ...

Compromising the browser is a high-return target for adversaries. Browser extensions, which are small software modules that are added to the browser and can enhance browsing experiences, have become a popular browser attack vector. This is because they are widely adopted among users and can easily turn malicious through developer actions or attacks on legitimate extensions. Recent incidents like  DataSpii  and the  Nigelthorn  malware attack have exposed the extent of damage that malicious extensions can inflict. In both cases, users innocently installed extensions that compromised their privacy and security. The underlying issue lies in the permissions granted to extensions. These permissions, often excessive and lacking granularity, allow attackers to exploit them. What can organizations do to protect themselves from the risks of browser extensions without barring them from use altogether (an act that would be nearly impossible to enforce)?  A new report b...

Google has announced plans to add a new feature in the upcoming version of its Chrome web browser to proactively alert users when an extension they have installed has been removed from the Chrome Web Store. The feature, set for release alongside Chrome 117, allows users to be notified when an add-on has been unpublished by a developer, taken down for violating Chrome Web Store policy, or marked as malware. The tech giant said it intends to highlight such extensions under a "Safety check" category in the "Privacy and security" section of the browser settings page. "When a user clicks 'Review,' they will be taken to their extensions and given the choice to either remove the extension or hide the warning if they wish to keep the extension installed," Oliver Dunk, a developer relations engineer for Chrome extensions,  said . "As in previous versions of Chrome, extensions marked as malware are automatically disabled." The development co...

Google on Thursday said it's rolling out new security features to Chrome browser aimed at detecting suspicious downloads and extensions via its Enhanced Safe Browsing feature, which it launched a year ago. To this end, the search giant said it will now offer additional protections when users attempt to install a new extension from the Chrome Web Store, notifying if it can be considered "trusted." Currently, 75% of all add-ons on the platform are compliant, the company pointed out, adding "any extensions built by a developer who follows the Chrome Web Store Developer Program Policies , will be considered trusted by Enhanced Safe Browsing." Enhanced Safe Browsing involves sharing real-time data with Google Safe Browsing to proactively safeguard users against dangerous sites. The company also noted that its integration with Safe Browsing's blocklist API helped improve privacy and security, with the number of malicious extensions disabled by the browser j...

In Brief Chrome apps and extensions make things easier, but they can also do terrible things like spy on web users and collect their personal data. But, now Google has updated its browser’s User Data Policy requiring all Chrome extension and app developers to disclose what data they collect. Furthermore, developers are prohibited from collecting unnecessary browsing data and must also use encryption when handling sensitive information from users. Around 40 percent of all Google Chrome users have some kind of browser extensions, plugins or add-ons installed, but how safe are they? The company plans to enforce developers starting this summer, to "ensure transparent use of the data in a way that is consistent with the wishes and expectations of users." Google is making its Chrome Web Store safer for its users by forcing developers to disclose how they handle customers' data. Google’s new User Data Policy will now force app developers, who use the Chrome We...

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged several popular Google Chrome extensions that have been found to transmit data in HTTP and hard-code secrets in their code, exposing users to privacy and security risks. "Several widely used extensions [...] unintentionally transmit sensitive data over simple HTTP," Yuanjing Guo, a security researcher in the Symantec's Security Technology and Response team, said . "By doing so, they expose browsing domains, machine IDs, operating system details, usage analytics, and even uninstall information, in plaintext." The fact that the network traffic is unencrypted also means that they are susceptible to adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks, allowing malicious actors on the same network such as a public Wi-Fi to intercept and, even worse, modify this data, which could lead to far more serious consequences. The list of identified extensions are below - SEMRush Rank (extension ID: idbhoeaiokcojcgappfigpifhpkjgmab) and P...

Should we feel happy about it? Let's find out! What Firefox has been thinking of is, it is planning to bring in Google chrome's web browser extensions to support the features of Mozilla Firefox. The parent company of Firefox i. e. Mozilla Foundation has decided to update their add-on and extension infrastructure, making Firefox more capable and user-friendly . Ranked number three, Firefox browser is seemingly thriving to attain the first position. Google Chrome and Internet Explorer are the ones ahead of it, leading to desktops and mobile devices altogether. The move will help Firefox in various ways like: Integration of new technologies like Electrolysis and Servo Protection from Adware and Spyware Shortening the time it takes to review add-ons Functionalities brought by Mozilla According to Mozilla, functionalities that are being brought with the help of modifications in Firefox Add-ons are: Introducing a Powerful add-on WebExtensions API A...

A Google Chrome extension with a "Featured" badge and six million users has been observed silently gathering every prompt entered by users into artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbots like OpenAI ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Google Gemini, xAI Grok, Meta AI, and Perplexity. The extension in question is Urban VPN Proxy , which has a 4.7 rating on the Google Chrome Web Store. It's advertised as the "best secured Free VPN access to any website, and unblock content." Its developer is a Delaware-based company named Urban Cyber Security Inc . On the Microsoft Edge Add-ons marketplace, it has 1.3 million installations .  Despite claiming that it allows users to "protect your online identity, stay protected, and hide your IP," an update was pushed to users on July 9, 2025, when version 5.5.0 was released with the AI data harvesting enabled by default using hard-coded settings. Specifically, this is achieved by means of a t...

Cybersecurity researchers discover a critical flaw in the popular Evernote Chrome extension that could have allowed hackers to hijack your browser and steal sensitive information from any website you accessed. Evernote is a popular service that helps people taking notes and organize their to-do task lists, and over 4,610,000 users have been using its Evernote Web Clipper Extension for Chrome browser. Discovered by Guardio, the vulnerability ( CVE-2019-12592 ) resided in the ways Evernote Web Clipper extension interacts with websites, iframes and inject scripts, eventually breaking the browser's same-origin policy (SOP) and domain-isolation mechanisms. According to researchers, the vulnerability could allow an attacker-controlled website to execute arbitrary code on the browser in the context of other domains on behalf of users, leading to a Universal Cross-site Scripting (UXSS or Universal XSS) issue. "A full exploit that would allow loading a remote hacker contr...

Google has announced that it's rolling out a new set of features to its Chrome browser that gives users more control over their data when surfing the internet and protects them against online threats. "With the newest version of Chrome, you can take advantage of our upgraded Safety Check, opt out of unwanted website notifications more easily and grant select permissions to a site for one time only," the tech giant said . The improvements to Safety Check allow it to run automatically in the background, notifying users of the actions it has taken, such as revoking permissions for websites they no longer visit, and flagging potentially unwanted notifications. It's also designed to notify users of security issues that need to be addressed, while automatically revoking notification permissions from suspicious sites identified by Google Safe Browsing . "On Desktop, Safety Check will continue to notify you if you have any Chrome extensions installed that may pose...

Google has finally patched a privacy vulnerability in its Chrome web browser for Android that exposes users' device model and firmware version, eventually enabling remote attackers to identify unpatched devices and exploit known vulnerabilities. The vulnerability, which has not yet given any CVE number, is an information disclosure bug that resides in the way the Google Chrome for Android generates 'User Agent' string containing the Android version number and build tag information, which includes device name and its firmware build. This information is also sent to applications using WebView and Chrome Tabs APIs, which can be used to track users and fingerprint devices on which they are running. For example: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 5.1.1; Nexus 6 Build/LYZ28K ) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/46.0.2490.34 Mobile Safari/537.36 Yakov Shafranovich, a contributor at Nightwatch Cybersecurity firm, initially reported this issue to Google three years a...

From unpatched cars to hijacked clouds, this week’s Threatsday headlines remind us of one thing — no corner of technology is safe. Attackers are scanning firewalls for critical flaws, bending vulnerable SQL servers into powerful command centers, and even finding ways to poison Chrome’s settings to sneak in malicious extensions. On the defense side, AI is stepping up to block ransomware in real time, but privacy fights over data access and surveillance are heating up just as fast. It’s a week that shows how wide the battlefield has become — from the apps on our phones to the cars we drive. Don’t keep this knowledge to yourself: share this bulletin to protect others, and add The Hacker News to your Google News list so you never miss the updates that could make the difference. Claude Now Finds Your Bugs Anthropic Touts Safety Protections Built Into Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic said it has rolled out a number of safety and security improve...