Avast says it got its hands on 28 extensions released on Google Chrome and Edge that contained malicious code. These extensions took the names of popular services such as Facebook, Instagram, Vimeo, etc. However, they included malware that was responsible for collecting users’ personal data, in particular the urls of the sites visited.
Along with this collection, the extensions also opened web pages in order to generate fake traffic.
It remains difficult to detect these malicious extensions, in particular because their malicious activity does not activate until several days after their installation in order to avoid the user to suspect them directly.
Here is the full list of extensions spotted by Avast:
- Direct Message for Instagram
- Direct Message for Instagram ™
- DM for Instagram
- Invisible mode for Instagram Direct Message
- Downloader for Instagram
- Instagram Download Video & Image
- App Phone for Instagram
- App Phone for Instagram
- Stories for Instagram
- Universal Video Downloader
- Universal Video Downloader
- Video Downloader for FaceBook ™
- Video Downloader for FaceBook ™
- Vimeo ™ Video Downloader
- Vimeo ™ Video Downloader
- Volume Controller
- Zoomer for Instagram and FaceBook
- VK UnBlock. Works fast.
- Odnoklassniki UnBlock. Works quickly.
- Upload photo to Instagram ™
- Spotify Music Downloader
- Stories for Instagram
- Upload photo to Instagram ™
- Pretty Kitty, The Cat Pet
- Video Downloader for YouTube
- SoundCloud Music Downloader
- The New York Times News
- Instagram App with Direct Message DM