Abusive add-ons aren’t just a Chrome and Firefox problem. Now it’s Edge’s turn
Edge users take to social media to report their Web searches are being hijacked. …
reader comments
50 with 39 posters participating
For years, Google and Mozilla have battled to keep abusive or outright malicious browser extensions from infiltrating their official repositories. Now, Microsoft is taking up the fight.
Over the past several days, people in website forums have complained of the Google searches being redirected to oksearch[.]com when they use Edge. Often, the searches use cdn77[.]org for connectivity.
After discovering the redirections weren’t an isolated incident, participants in this Reddit discussion winnowed the list of suspects down to five. All of them are knockoffs of legitimate add-ons. That means that while the extensions bear the names of legitimate developers, they are, in fact, imposters with no relation.
They include:
NordVPN
Adguard VPN
TunnelBear VPN
The Great Suspender
Floating Player — Picture-in-Picture Mode
“I had the tunnelbear extension installed, but I removed it once I figured out it was causing the issue,” Laurence Norah, a photographer at Finding the Universe, told me by email. “It’s easy enough to see it happening—if you install one of the affected extensions in Edge, open dev tools, and press the ‘sources’ tab, you’ll see something that shouldn’t be there like ok-search.org or cdn77.”
His account was consistent with images and accounts from other forum participants. Below are two screenshots:
In a statement, Microsoft officials wrote: “We’re investigating the reported extensions listed and will take action as needed to help protect customers.” The statement follows comments in this Reddit comment in which someone identifying herself as a
Continue reading – Article source
