Researchers say the attack was the most far-reaching malicious Chrome store campaign to date
A newly discovered spyware effort attacked users through 32-million downloads of extensions to Google’s market-leading Chrome web browser, researchers at Awake Security said, highlighting the tech industry’s failure to protect browsers as they are used more for e-mail, payroll and other sensitive functions.
Most of the free extensions purported to warn users about questionable websites or convert files from one format to another. Instead, they siphoned off browsing history and data that provided credentials for access to internal business tools. “Anything that gets you into somebody’s browser or e-mail or other sensitive areas would be a target for national espionage as well as organised crime,” said former National Security Agency engineer Ben Johnson, who founded security companies Carbon Black and Obsidian Security.
“This shows how attackers can use extremely simple methods to hide, in this case, thousands of malicious domains,” Golomb said. Fogel said there was no record of the inquiries Golomb said he made in April and again in May to the company’s e-mail address for reporting abusive behaviour, and he asked for a list of suspect domains. Reuters sent him that list three times without getting a substantive response.
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