More than 37,000 Chrome users downloaded a fake version of the popular ad blocker Adblock Plus. The extension was offered through the official Chrome Web Store, security researcher SwiftOnSecurity tweets on Twitter.
The extension had non-latin characters in its name which tricked users in thinking it was the legitimate version of Adblock Plus. More than 37,000 Chrome users were tricked this way. Once installed the fake version shows all kinds of advertisements. The criminals behind the fake extension seem to have done the same trick with more popular Chrome extensions.
Google has now removed the extension from the Chrome Web Store. The real version of Adblock Plus has more than 10,000,000 users and more than 158,000 reviews.
Adblock Plus states that users can easily check whether they have downloaded the fake version by viewing in the details whether the extension comes from the official adblockplus.org domain. Besides that, the fake version was offered as an app and not as extension.
