I've developed a few browser extensions, and every week I receive numerous emails with "revenue offer". Some experienced developers know that offers like these will inject malware into the browsers of your users, but scammers who make these offers will not tell you about it. They offer "integrations" that don't look so suspicious. Imagine how many developers have accepted these offers. Then look at the number of extensions in your browser and think about how much risk there is that you have an extension with malware.
  • Knusper@feddit.de
    31·
    1 year ago

    Mozilla prohibits connections to the internet, which aren’t necessary for the advertised functionality of an extension. So, these are rather “Chrome extensions” we’re talking about…

  • off_brand_@beehaw.org
    11·
    1 year ago

    I wonder how easy it would be to make an extension and fake it’s popularity? Make make it intentionally broken or something, so users immediately uninstall it too.

    Sounds like an easy $10k, assuming the scammers would actually pay.

  • Cynber@lemmy.ca
    3·
    1 year ago

    Don’t extensions get reviewed by the various stores? I’d imagine an automated check could catch malicious integrations like that.

    Maybe not right away, but once they catch wind of one shady extension they could just search the store for any other ones.

    • railsdev@programming.dev
      3·
      1 year ago

      This is addressed toward the bottom of the article. It states that automated testing by the app stores is probably easy to circumvent.

      • Cynber@lemmy.ca
        3·
        1 year ago

        I guess so, it would still be a problem. Once one extension is caught, it should be simpler to catch the rest.

        It’s harder to quickly switch stuff up when you need to send the devs new code to put in