Reports of Trojan as a Chrome Extension Emerge
Posted on 20. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in News
There is a reason why Google has set up their own extension site, where they make sure that they do a security review of each “plug-in” that is submitted for their browser to check potential security problems. As more people use Chrome browser, the threat of malicious software increases. Think of the problems that Internet Explorer has had to deal with in the past. Because of those headaches, Google has tried really hard to start initiatives to thwart security issues in their own browser ecosystem before it gets too big.
The easiest way to obtain access to Chrome? One is through Flash, but Google has decided to add that as an integrated feature. Another way is through extensions. That’s why it’s a big deal when the Romanian antivirus company BitDefender reports that an extension now exists that has intentions on exploiting a user’s system, typical of a trojan virus.
The Malware City blog by BitDefender describes the situation whereby a user gets an email to download a Chrome extension that has not-so-good intentions. The user is led to a site that looks the same as the official Google extension site, but the URL is not the same, something akin to phishing. They also talk about the fact that some of the more savvy users will know that an extension will come as an install file with a .crx extension, as opposed to this malicious extension that has an .exe extension.
Herein lays the problem with extensions. Everyone must realize that the only place to install an extension is from Google’s official extension site. At the beginning of 2010, McAfee released a report that reiterated this point: the problem is that now the Chrome platform is reaching a stage of major adoption – starting with the browser. Fortunately Google has set up an extension site where we know we can get added functions to our browser without the worry that they will totally screw up our system.
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09. Jul, 2010
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