Massive spying on users of Google’s Chrome shows new security weakness

A newly discovered spyware effort attacked users through 32 million downloads of extensions to Google’s market-leading Chrome web browser, researchers at Awake Security told Reuters, highlighting the tech industry’s failure to protect browsers as they are used more for email, payroll and other sensitive functions. Alphabet Inc’s Google said it removed more than 70 of the malicious add-ons from its official Chrome Web Store after being alerted by the researchers last month. Anything that gets you into somebody’s browser or email or other sensitive areas would be a target for national espionage as well as organised crime, said former National Security Agency engineer Ben Johnson, who founded security companies Carbon Black and Obsidian Security. We do regular sweeps to find extensions using similar techniques, code and behaviours, Google’s Westover said, in identical language to what Google gave out after Duo’s report.