Cybersecurity Research and Provider company Avast, has recently discovered about 28 new browser extensions, both in Google Web Store and in Microsoft Edge add-ons portal. These extensions are considered highly dangerous by Avast. Once these extensions have been downloaded in the browser, the malware starts to work on stealing sensitive private data from your browser as well as it can take you to various phishing websites.
But, the most alarming fact that has come into the light is that at the time Avast published the news of these malware extensions, the extensions were still present for download on the official marketplace for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browser extensions. Security researchers at Avast have contacted both the tech giants regarding this alarming fact and the companies have assured that they are looking into the matter.
Even so, some more worrying facts have been brought into light by Avast. According to them, the problem was being monitored by their team since the month of November, but the research team suspects that the problem may have been active for the last 2 years. According to malware researcher Jan Rubin, the reason why these extensions have escaped the limelight for so long is the fact that the backdoors of these extensions were very well-hidden and started working after some days of the download of the extension, this made the malware very hard to keep track of.
If you want a full list of the problematic extensions detected by Avast, you can read the full official report at :