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Firefox and Chrome Extensions That Block Add-On Management

posted by janrinok on Monday January 22 2018, @12:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the problem-and-solution dept.

Apparition writes:

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.

 

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 23 2018, @10:34AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 23 2018, @10:34AM (#626489)

    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.

    Yes, we get your point. We just disagree based on Google's $795 billion market value.