Is Your Browser Extension a Botnet Backdoor?

Discussion in 'other security issues & news' started by ronjor, Mar 1, 2021.

  1. ronjor

    ronjor Global Moderator

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    https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/03/is-your-browser-extension-a-botnet-backdoor/
     
  2. EASTER

    EASTER Registered Member

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    Good article. Thanks
     
  3. wat0114

    wat0114 Registered Member

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    Good article, thanks ronjor. I only use three extensions in Firefox, and they are in the "Recommended" category.
     
  4. Rasheed187

    Rasheed187 Registered Member

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    Can you perhaps explain what this Infatica company exactly did? How did they use extensions for malicious purposes?
     
  5. wat0114

    wat0114 Registered Member

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    From what I can gather, they pay extension authors to insert their code into the extension, so infatica customers who browse to a web site using the modified extension will look like the traffic is coming from an extension user, and not from the customer. A sort of anonymizing tool, I guess.

    In this case it's not malicious use, but because of the power that so many extensions have, a malicious author could re-code it for malicious purposes.
     
  6. Rasheed187

    Rasheed187 Registered Member

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    Thanks, I still don't get it to be honest. But yes, a malicious browser extension is always a risk, it's best to limit the amount of them as much as possible. Here's an interesting article:

    https://medium.com/redmorph/malicious-browser-extensions-what-you-should-know-cb7ecb477dbc
     
  7. wat0114

    wat0114 Registered Member

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