Google recently removed 106 more extensions from its Chrome Web Store after they were found illegally collecting sensitive user data as part of a “massive global surveillance campaign” targeting oil and gas, finance, and healthcare sectors.
More than 100 malicious and fake Google Chrome browser extensions have amassed around 33 million downloads in total, according to an investigation by security firm Awake. Awake Security further says, the malicious browser add-ons were tied back to a single internet domain registrar.
Report highlights:
· The attacker’s infrastructure including 15,160 malicious/suspicious domains and 111 malicious or fake Chrome extensions with approximately 33 million downloads
· The connections between this campaign and a number of traditional malware families
However, it's not immediately clear who is behind the spyware effort."This campaign and the Chrome extensions involved performed operations such as taking screenshots of the victim device, loading malware, reading the clipboard, and actively harvesting tokens and user input," Awake Security said.
The extensions in question posed as utilities offering capabilities to convert files from one format to the other, among other tools for secure browsing, while relying on thousands of fake reviews to trick unsuspecting users into installing them.
Furthermore, the actors behind the operation leveraged evasion techniques to avoid flagging the domains as malicious by anti-malware solutions, thereby allowing the surveillance campaign to go undetected.
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