Technology

58303 readers

17 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

300

Password-stealing Chrome extension smuggled on to Web Store; Researchers Demonstrated that Password-stealing Extensions are Still Possible with Manifest V3 (www.malwarebytes.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Summary

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have demonstrated that Chrome browser extensions can steal passwords from text input fields, even if the extension is compliant with Chrome's latest security and privacy standard, Manifest V3.
They created a proof-of-concept browser extension that could steal passwords and put it through the Chrome Web Store review process.
The attack works by exploiting the fact that extensions have full and unfettered access to the Document Object Model (DOM) of every web page you visit. The DOM is a representation of a web page in computer memory that can be accessed and changed, allowing the page to be modified on-the-fly.
The researchers found that most of the top 10,000 websites are vulnerable to this attack, including Google, Facebook, Gmail, Cloudflare, and Amazon.
They also analyzed the extensions already on the Chrome Web Store and found that 12.5% of them had the necessary permissions to exploit the password input field vulnerabilities.
The researchers offer two potential fixes: A "bolt on" remedy for vulnerable sites and a "built in" remedy for browsers.
The bolt on is a JavaScript library that can be added to websites to prevent unwanted access to password fields.
The built in remedy suggests changing Chrome to alert users whenever any JavaScript function accesses any password fields.

Possible Takeaways / Other Details

Google have improved security in the Manifest V3 standard, but it's still possible to sneak in a password stealing extension into the webstore.
Some/all of the standard's security improvements may have also been adopted by Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox.
It is important to be aware of the risks associated with using browsers' extensions. Only install extensions from trusted sources and carefully review the permissions that they request.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a whole lot of effort compared to how they are able to phish now, which is launder their code by paying some (perhaps unsuspecting) extension developer to include an external dependency in their well-established extension.

Such effort as you're describing would be harder to pull off, easier to spot and limit the victim pool significantly all at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The methods they described are very common hacking techniques once a site is compromised. They are not difficult nor more work than you'd expect, not out of the realm of normal work for a hacker with a site they can tweak.