Chrome Web Store Gives Bad Extensions the Boot

Google has given its Chrome Store a spring cleaning, ridding it of more than 200 browser add-ons and extensions that may have been delivering spyware and malware to users. "Obviously, they need to put more work into screening of uploads to the Chrome Store if it should be considered a trusted source," noted Martin Zetterlund, founder of ScrapeSentry.

Google recently purged some 200 extensions from its Chrome Store inventory. Extensions and add-ons let users add functions and features to the Chrome Web browser, but bad extensions can expose users to a greater risk of spyware and malware. A major problem with many browser add-ons is ad injectors.

The clean-up resulted from an extensive search for embedded code that violates Google's policies, triggered by increasing user complaints.
Google has been studying add-on security risks with a team at the University of California, Berkeley, and will release a full report of its findings on May 1.
"It is not so much the security of the Chrome browser as the security in having an open store for downloading extensions," noted Martin Zetterlund, founder of ScrapeSentry.
"I am sure Google automatically screens any extension uploaded -- but the bad guys will, of course, do their best to trick automatic screening," he told LinuxInsider.