Chrome Extensions with 1.4 Million Installs Steal Browsing Data

A technical guide to all you need to know

Hellp Savvy, threat analysts at McAfee found five Google Chrome extensions that steal track users’ browsing activity. Collectively, the extensions have been downloaded  more then 1.4  million times.

The purpose of the malicious extensions is to monitor when users visit e-commerce website and to modify the visitor's cookie to appear as if they came through a referrer link. For this, the authors of the extensions get an affiliate fee for any purchases at electronic shops.

The five malicious extensions that McAfee researchers discovered are the following: