280 million people downloaded malware-infected Google Chrome browser extensions from the Google Chrome Web Store over a period of about three years, according to a recent Stanford University research paper.
The research team, including Sheryl Hsu, Manda Tran and Aurore Fass of Stanford University, downloaded and examined the codes of approximately 1.25 lakh extensions available on the Google Chrome Web Store, trying to find security-noteworthy extensions (SNEs), Business Insider wrote.
These are the type of extensions that either violate the web store policies or contain malware.
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Out of approximately 346 million users who had downloaded these types of extensions during the nearly three year period between July 2020 and February 2023, 280 million of these downloads involved extensions with malware, according to the report.
However, Google itself claimed this is not the case. Less than 1% of all installs from the Chrome Web Store, numbering to 250,000 were found to include malware in 2024, Google had written in its blog post on June 20, 2024.
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Google Chrome currently is the most popular browser worldwide, with a market share of 65.12%, according to Statcounter data.
These are some of the ways you can protect yourself from malware attacks through extensions, according to Google’s blog post:
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2024-06-26T11:29:20Z dg43tfdfdgfd