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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday August 01 2017, @12:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the auto-updates-and-weak-security dept.

gHacks reports

The makers of the popular Chrome and Firefox extension Copyfish [which does optical character recognition (OCR) and language translation] announced yesterday that the Chrome version of the extension was hijacked.

[...] an attacker managed to steal the Google password of a team member using phishing on July 28th, 2017.

[...] The Chrome extension was [then] updated to version 2.8.5 [...] the next day, something that the company did not realize directly. The attacker, who held the password and email address for the developer account, pushed a manipulated extension to the Chrome store.

Since Chrome [extensions] update automatically without user interaction, the majority of users of the extension received the updated version.

[...] Reports began to come in on July 30, 2017 that Copyfish for Chrome was displaying ads and spam on websites.

[...] [The Copyfish developers have] no access to the extension at this point in time. They cannot update it, and the attackers may push out another version of the extension to the userbase. Since Chrome extensions update automatically, it can only be prevented by removing the extension for Chrome for the time being.

[...] This is done by loading chrome://extensions/ in the browser's address bar and activating the trash icon next to the extension.

Additional coverage at BleepingComputer and Forbes


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 01 2017, @03:29AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 01 2017, @03:29AM (#547503)

    This software for analyzing/OCR'ing scans of text is CopyFish.
    A video analysis program used in analyzing sporting events is DartFish.

    Any others? What, if any, is the significance of "...Fish" to analysis software?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 01 2017, @03:56AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 01 2017, @03:56AM (#547510)

    Copyfish is probably a reference to the babel fish from HHGTTG.

    • (Score: 1) by TrentDavey on Tuesday August 01 2017, @04:54PM

      by TrentDavey (1526) on Tuesday August 01 2017, @04:54PM (#547704)

      If the reader is baffled by the Fish suffix, they're probably not going to know that HHGTTG is an acronym for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and that:
      "The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish."
      -from http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Babel_Fish [wikia.com]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 01 2017, @05:25AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 01 2017, @05:25AM (#547525)

    BlowFish was probably the first.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 01 2017, @09:42AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 01 2017, @09:42AM (#547576)

      > Blowfish ...

      https://www.amazon.com/Blowfish-Hangovers-Tablets-FDA-Recognized-Scientifically/dp/B005EHQGCU?th=1 [amazon.com]

      About the product

              BEST HANGOVER REMEDY - Blowfish is the only hangover remedy with a formulation that's recognized as effective by the FDA. It's real medicine, backed by science and guaranteed to work. Or your money back.
              TAKEN IN THE MORNING - Blowfish is designed to be taken when you wake up, so you don't have plan your hangovers. In the morning, just drop two tablets in water to make a refreshing lemony drink. You'll start to feel better in 15 minutes.
      ...

      Or did you mean something else?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 01 2017, @12:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 01 2017, @12:13PM (#547604)

    Then there's the Lenovo distributed Israel made malware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish [wikipedia.org]