A safe attachment cyber security researcher John Tner has identified 57 malicious chrome extensions that can be used to track your activities or run malware. Although most of the extensions in the question are not available on the Chrome web store, they have been downloaded more than 6 million times, bleepingcomputer report.
The most popular of extension is called Kaponomia: coupons and cashbacks (with 700,000+ users), followed by fire shield extension protection and total security for chrome (with 300,000+ users every 300,000+ users). You can see the complete list of extensions in this spreadsheet.
Due to the false promises of increased safety and/or real -world money, many users have been lured to download these malicious extensions through advertisements or scam sites.
The malicious extensions found on the Chrome web store have been removed as this writing, but it will be difficult – if not impossible – to deal with people spreading through other channels.
If you suspect that you have downloaded a malicious chrome extension, then you should uninstall it immediately and change any password for any related account that may have fallen into the wrong hands.
Further reading: The main suggestions to make Google Chrome more secure
This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC Four Alla and was translated and localized from Swedish.
