The Case for Limiting Your Browser Extensions
Summary: Blue Shield of California removed unauthorized code from its website after KrebsOnSecurity reported it was flagged for serving malicious content; an investigation traced the injection to Page Ruler, a Chrome extension with roughly 400,000 downloads installed on the computer of an employee who had edited the site. The extension, sold by original developer Peter Newnham to MonetizUs in 2017, detects when a user types into forms such as WordPress or Joomla editors and appends a javascript link that causes visitors' browsers to display ads.
What's compelling: A measuring tool with 400,000 downloads was sold to an ad-monetization firm and is still in the Chrome store despite multiple reports of malicious code, and the same injected javascript appears on hundreds of other sites. The extension's advertised opt-out points to a domain that no longer resolves, leaving users no working way to turn the behavior off.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Data Breaches
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