If you’re an Android user concerned with your general mobile security and data privacy, you’ve probably become accustomed to hearing about a new malware-spreading campaign once every couple of weeks or so (if not more often), with each such discovery requiring a thorough review of all apps installed on your phone and the immediate removal of any potentially dangerous or intrusive title.
But Google‘s Play Store is far from the only online place riddled with security threats, and if you also happen to be a devoted Chrome user on a desktop computer, you need to perform a similar check of all your browser extensions as soon as possible too.
A cybersecurity researcher by the name of Wladimir Palant has found no less than 34 such problematic titles of late, and while Big G took action upon being informed of this discovery (which was subsequently verified by Avast) to delete all the malicious extensions from the official Chrome Web Store, you have to do the same if you’re among the 87 million (!!!) “weekly active” users under attack here and remove the following from your computer:
- Autoskip for Youtube
- Soundboost
- Crystal Ad block
- Brisk VPN
- Clipboard Helper
- Maxi Refresher
- Quick Translation
- Easyview Reader view
- PDF toolbox
- Epsilon Ad blocker
- Craft Cursors
- Alfablocker ad blocker
- Zoom Plus
- Base Image Downloader
- Clickish fun cursors
- Cursor – A custom cursor
- Amazing Dark Mode
- Maximum Color Changer for Youtube
- Awesome Auto Refresh
- Venus Adblock
- Adblock Dragon
- Readl Reader mode
- Volume Frenzy
- Image download center
- Font Customizer
- Easy Undo Closed Tabs
- Screence screen recorder
- OneCleaner
- Repeat button
- Leap Video Downloader
- Tap Image Downloader
- Qspeed Video Speed Controller
- HyperVolume
- Light picture-in-picture
As some of the names above suggest, many of these Chrome extensions promised and even offered legitimate (and legitimately useful) functionalities. That’s obviously what made them so incredibly popular (even though Avast believes that combined 87 million installation tally was somehow artificially inflated), helping them go unnoticed for a long time as they injected your computers with unwanted ads and altered search results.
That may not sound as serious as your everyday Android banking trojan, spyware, or fleeceware, but left unattended for too long, a malicious ad-spreading piece of software like these can definitely become… annoying if not very dangerous. Given that there are plenty of “clean” alternatives to all the insidious extensions on this here list, you have no sensible reason to keep them up and running.
