Google Chrome extensions. They’re a cool feature chrome provides, where you can add almost anything to enhance your experience while browsing the internet. For example, one of the most common extensions people use is AdBlocker. Although, if you thought these extensions were harmless, you were wrong. For the past two years, hundreds of Chrome extensions were participating in extension fraud. After months of research, Google pulled over 500 extensions that utilized such malicious behavior. The developers had designed their extensions in a way that when the user opened up the internet/opened a new page after successfully installing the extension, the user would be waiting for the page to load, the unknowingly would be routed through thirty other websites. These websites would be advertisements, where each time someone clicked on the website, the developer of the extension would receive a profit. All of this occurred within the few seconds you were waiting for a website to open – and you had no idea. Thousands clicks would go to ad marketing just by you opening up a new page after downloading an extension. On the other hand, the companies who were getting views were also unaware that a huge percentage of views on their websites weren’t actually people viewing it – companies could only see their view count. By downloading these extensions, you allowed information about your device to be accessed. The websites a user unknowingly was sent to could infect your computer, as it could check if different security aspects of your device were patched and up-to-date and furthermore could install malware. Despite all the legal factors with fraud and theft, one of the most alarming components of this cyber security scandal is that the user had no idea this was occurring and was hidden within in extra two minutes of loading time.
sources:
Google pulls 500 malicious Chrome extensions after researcher tip-off
https://www.wired.com/story/over-500-chrome-extensions-secretly-uploaded-private-data/