Google Is Too Slow At Clearing Junkware From the Chrome Extension Store

Mark Wilson writes Malware is something computer users — and even mobile and tablet owners — are now more aware of than ever. That said, many people do not give a second thought to installing a browser extension to add new features to their most frequently used application. Despite the increased awareness, malware is not something a lot of web users think of in relation to extensions; but they should.

Since the beginning of 2015 — just over three months — Google has already received over 100,000 complaints from Chrome users about 'ad injectors' hidden in extensions. Security researchers have also discovered that a popular extension — Webpage Screenshot — includes code that could be used to send browsing history back to a remote server. Google is taking steps to clean up the extension store to try to prevent things like this happening, but security still needs to be tightened up.

Comments

Autoupdating is the biggest problem.

[__Paul__]

The really bad thing about Chrome is the way it is impossible to stop extensions from automatically updating.

An extension can be perfectly good, when first installed, but if the author goes rogue, has a security breach or just sells the extension to a third party, there is no way to stop it from automatically updating.