Malicious websites browser extension APIs can be exploited (browsers) to run code inside the browser and steal sensitive information such as users' bookmarks, browsing history or even cookies.
Of course an attacker can with cookies can capture the user's active sessions and access sensitive accounts such as email inboxes, social profiles, or bank accounts, etc.
In addition, the same APIs (always talking about extensions used by browsers) can be used to enable malicious files to be downloaded and stored on the user's device. This data is stored in the storage of an extension, and can later be used to track users across the web.
These kinds of attacks are no longer theoretical, since they have been proven recently in a study published by Dolière Francis Somé, a researcher from the Université Côte d'Azur and INRIA, the French research institute.
Somé developed one tool and reviewed over 78.000 Chrome, Firefox and Opera extensions. It was able to identify 197 extensions that allowed internal API communication interfaces to be exposed to web applications. This can give malicious websites access to data stored in a user's browser, data that should not normally be accessible.
Chrome | Firefox | Opera | Total | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Extensions analyzed | 66,401 | 9,391 | 2,523 | 78,315 |
Suspicious extensions | 3,303 | 483 | 210 | 3,996 |
Execute code | 15 | 2 | 2 | 19 |
Bypass SOP | 48 | 9 | 6 | 63 |
Read cookies | 8 | - | - | 8 |
Read browsing history | 40 | - | - | 1 |
Read bookmarks | 37 | 1 | - | 38 |
Get extensions installed | 33 | - | - | 33 |
Store / retrieve data | 85 | 2 | 3 | 90 |
Trigger downloads | 29 | 5 | 2 | 36 |
Total of unique extensions | 171 | 16 | 10 | 197 |
The French researcher reports that he was surprised by the results, as only 15 (7,61%) of 197 extensions were development tools, a category of extensions that usually have full control over what happens to a browser and are from applications that do not must have security holes.
About 55% of all extensions had less than 1.000 installations, but over 15% had over 10.000.
Somé said he advised browser developers of his findings before publishing the survey to the public in early January.
"Everyone recognized the problems," says Somé. “Firefox has remove all the extensions I mentioned to them. Opera has also removed all extensions but there are still 2 that can be exploited to trigger downloads”.
“Chrome also recognized the problem. We are still discussing together the possible measures to be taken. ”
The researcher also created a tool that allows users to check if their extensions contain a susceptible API that can exploit malicious websites. The tool is web-based and hosted on this page.
To use it, you'll need to copy-paste the contents of the manifest.json file of the extension you are interested in.
Watch the videos published by the researcher
If you want to read more in Somé's work: EmPoWeb: Empowering Web Applications with Browser Extensions, ”You can download it as a PDF from here and here.
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