Microsoft apologizes for removing VSCode extensions used by millions

Microsoft has reinstated the 'Material Theme – Free' and 'Material Theme Icons – Free' extensions on the Visual Studio Marketplace after finding that the obfuscated code they contained wasn't actually malicious. The two VSCode extensions, which count over 9 million installs, were pulled from the VSCode Marketplace in late February over security risks, and their publisher, Mattia Astorino (aka 'equinusocio') was banned from the platform. "A member of the community did a deep security analysis of the extension and found multiple red flags that indicate malicious intent and reported this to us," stated a Microsoft employee at the time. "Our security researchers at Microsoft confirmed this claim and found additional suspicious code." Researchers Amit Assaraf and Itay Kruk, who were deploying AI-powered scanners seeking suspicious submissions on VSCode, first flagged them as potentially malicious. The researchers told BleepingComputer that their high-risk evaluation for Material Theme ... Read full article.