GoKawiil319 Chrome extensions with 13.4 million installs hijacked search traffic
Security researcher John Tuckner of Socket documented 319 Chrome extensions, collectively installed 13.4 million times, that silently override users' default search engine and reroute queries through proxy servers before landing on Bing or Yahoo. This builds on his April 2025 finding of 57 such extensions with 6 million users, adding 264 newly identified ones covering another 8.7 million installs. The extensions masquerade as PDF converters, search tools, and similar utilities, and are unlisted on the Chrome Web Store, spreading instead through ads on other websites.