All in all, over 20 million Google Chrome browsers were infected by just these five fake extensions.Īs of today, Google had removed most of these fake adblock extensions from the Chrome Web Store. Ouch!ĪdGuard researchers looked at the activity of the five most popular fake extensions - the least popular one had 30,000 downloads, while another one was downloaded over 10 million times. The hackers used names similar to popular extensions like “Adblock Plus Premium” and “Adguard Hardline” to get their fake ad blockers to rank higher in web searches and deceive Chrome users into installing them and using them. Security researchers claim these completely fake Google Chrome ad block extensions are nothing more than “rip-offs” or clones of legitimate ad blockers that hackers have embedded with malicious code that spies on their browser activity. Given the popularity of ad blockers, it's no surprise to guess that people don't exactly admire online ads.īut this very fascination for ad blockers has now been exploited by some very smart hackers, as a result millions of Google Chrome users are getting spied on right now.Īccording to AdGuard Research, as many as 20 million Google Chrome users have been duped into downloading and installing fake ad block extensions.

Adguard google extension