V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 18, 2020 Share Posted June 18, 2020 Massive spying on users of Google's Chrome shows new security weakness SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A newly discovered spyware effort attacked users through 32 million downloads of extensions to Google’s market-leading Chrome web browser, researchers at Awake Security told Reuters, highlighting the tech industry’s failure to protect browsers as they are used more for email, payroll and other sensitive functions. Read more... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted June 18, 2020 Share Posted June 18, 2020 This is always been the case though. There is always someone putting a malicious extension on firefox and chrome. Usually these extensions are knock offs and are easy to recognize. They are usually found/reported and then removed. The real problem is the driveby attacks from malicious websites that automatically install extensions/addons without being prompted. This has came and gone over the years but is usually loaded via a "free" game or some other "free" thing online. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bookmem Posted June 18, 2020 Share Posted June 18, 2020 1 hour ago, securitybreach said: This is always been the case though. There is always someone putting a malicious extension on firefox and chrome. Usually these extensions are knock offs and are easy to recognize. They are usually found/reported and then removed. The real problem is the driveby attacks from malicious websites that automatically install extensions/addons without being prompted. This has came and gone over the years but is usually loaded via a "free" game or some other "free" thing online. One place you wouldn't expect to find them are cooking recipies, but you do. I had an elderly neighbor whose computer was constantly being attacked and I finally tracked it down to the fact that she loved downloading recipies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted June 18, 2020 Share Posted June 18, 2020 4 hours ago, Bookmem said: One place you wouldn't expect to find them are cooking recipies, but you do. I had an elderly neighbor whose computer was constantly being attacked and I finally tracked it down to the fact that she loved downloading recipies. No big surprise there as they target older folks who do not realize what is going on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted June 19, 2020 Share Posted June 19, 2020 The most annoying piece of spyware I ever dealt with was Conduit Search Protect. I must have removed this from Lillian's computer 10 times, as she kept installing all this "free" software to make her computer run faster and defrag her hard drive (not that she knew what that meant.) Malwarebytes takes care of it easily. Before I ditched McAfee I got one of those "FBI will arrest you" scareware apps from checking the weather in Poland during the 2012 Euro football championship. That was a drive-by install and I think I got rid of it with Hitman Pro at the time. Bitdefender Traffic Light is handy to check a site for malware. You can run that in Chrome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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