Extension ratings for Chrome browser did not protect against malware installationApps26 June 2024, 11:15

According to the scientists, they examined Security Noteworthy Extensions (SNE) in the Chrome store. SNE is defined as an extension that contains malware, violates Chrome Web Store policies, or contains vulnerable code.

Google admits that its security experts check published extensions to identify inspection flaws and detect those that have already been published. A study was conducted in this context.

Not only the extensions themselves were taken into account, but also the “popular” ratings published by users, as a rule, through extensions. But user ratings turned out to be useless; Malicious or potentially unwanted extensions were not only published in the Chrome Store, but also remained in the store for a long time and were installed regularly.

According to researchers, 346 million users installed SNES between July 2020 and February 2023. 63 million users violated Chrome Store policies, 3 million installed vulnerable extensions, and 280 million installed extensions containing malware. At the time, there were almost 125,000 extensions available on the Chrome Web Store, and 1% of them were not “bad.”

Researchers found that secure Chrome extensions typically don’t stay in the store for long, with only 51.8-62.9% of them still available after a year. In contrast, SNE remained in the store longer: an average of 380 days with malware and 1248 days with vulnerable codes.

“Overall, users do not give SNE lower scores, which suggests that users may not be aware that some extensions are dangerous. Of course, it is also possible for bots to give fake reviews and high scores to these extensions. But given that half of SNEs have no reviews at all, in this context “The use of fake reviews does not appear to be widespread.”