Five popular ad blockers that are used more than 20 million Google Chrome users have been found to be malicious. A researcher from AdGuard discovered that these extensions concealed malicious scripts before Google removed them.
One of the extensions, called AdRemover for Google Chrome, had more than 10 million downloads by the time it was reported to Google by AdGuard. Some of these extensions were really popular even ranging up to 10 million downloads. These malicious ad-blocking extensions copied the legitimate ad blocking code from real ad blockers and added its own harmful one to the same code. Basically, it was a botnet composed of browsers infected with the fake AdBlock extensions. Once infected, the browser can do whatever the command center server owner orders it to do.
Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/20-million-chrome-users-downloaded-fake-ad-blockers/
One of the extensions, called AdRemover for Google Chrome, had more than 10 million downloads by the time it was reported to Google by AdGuard. Some of these extensions were really popular even ranging up to 10 million downloads. These malicious ad-blocking extensions copied the legitimate ad blocking code from real ad blockers and added its own harmful one to the same code. Basically, it was a botnet composed of browsers infected with the fake AdBlock extensions. Once infected, the browser can do whatever the command center server owner orders it to do.
Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/20-million-chrome-users-downloaded-fake-ad-blockers/
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