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A fake Adblock Plus extension made it through Google's verification process and lived in the official Chrome Web Store alongside the real one: Google has taken down the phony listing after SwiftOnSecurity tweeted about it and put the company on blast, but by then, it has already been up long enough to fool 37,000 people. That's a drop in the bucket for a service that has 10 million users, but it sounds like trouble for those who were unlucky enough to download it.
SwiftOnSecurity says the fake extension was created by a "fraudulent developer who clones popular name and spams keywords." Indeed, it's pretty hard to tell that it's fake, since its developer's name is "Adblock Plus," and it has a considerable number of reviews. According to one of the fake Adblock's reviewers, he started getting invasive ads that open lots of tabs after he installed it. Unfortunately, it's unclear what else it can do or if it has even more detrimental effects that we still don't know of.
SwiftOnSecurity says the fake extension was created by a "fraudulent developer who clones popular name and spams keywords." Indeed, it's pretty hard to tell that it's fake, since its developer's name is "Adblock Plus," and it has a considerable number of reviews. According to one of the fake Adblock's reviewers, he started getting invasive ads that open lots of tabs after he installed it. Unfortunately, it's unclear what else it can do or if it has even more detrimental effects that we still don't know of.
