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A new breed of malicious Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome extensions uses techniques to make their removal much more difficult.
Malwarebytes revealed in a blog post how these extensions block user access to the add-on management page of the browser and therefore removal from within the browser.
The Chrome extension Tiempo en colombia en vivo was available on the official Chrome Web Store but was distributed mostly on third-party websites.
The browser extension monitors open tabs while it runs. If the user opens chrome://extensions/, it will redirect the request to chrome://apps/?r=extensions automatically. This is done so that the user cannot remove the extension as it is not listed on the apps page.
The Firefox add-on FF Helper Protection shows similar traits. It monitors open tabs for the string about:addons to close the tab automatically if it is found.
Both extensions have in common that they prevent users from accessing the add-on management interface of the browser.
The article includes detailed instructions on how to remove the malicious Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome extensions.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @01:11PM (6 children)
All of this wouldn't matter if extensions were manually reviewed. Too bad Google never did this, relying on inaccurate heuristics (if we believe them, they probably don't even have that in reality) and Mozule decided to abandon because the Google cargocultists demanded it as part of their ongoing chromonification.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday January 22 2018, @02:50PM (4 children)
Who would pay for the review of each extension? If Google, then where would Google get the money? Even if ad revenue from Search is enough to keep Search, Chromium, and the present Chrome Web Store alive, it might not be enough to fund the manual review that you recommend.
Or would you prefer a situation more like that of the iOS App Store, where your favorite legitimate extension would be removed from Chrome Web Store because their developers could no longer afford the $99 per year fee to continue to publish an extension that brings in no direct revenue?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Monday January 22 2018, @03:04PM (2 children)
Well, Google already funds and produces the Chrome browser for free, so obviously they're getting some very significant business benefit from making what is now the world's most popular browser. The same benefit should pay for doing some better review of apps on the Chrome store.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday January 22 2018, @07:15PM (1 child)
My hypothesis is that though this "very significant business benefit" exists, it isn't large enough to justify spending money on clearing out the inevitable backlog that a change from automatic to manual review would entail without some additional revenue source.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 23 2018, @10:34AM
Yes, we get your point. We just disagree based on Google's $795 billion market value.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @09:04PM
"How would a multi-fucktillion dollar business fund something"
Yeah, I wonder.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Monday January 22 2018, @04:36PM
Naïve and wrong.
Manual review is an obvious step to take, but it's no cure-all.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?