75M installs of Malicious Chrome extensions removed from Web Store.

Google has removed 32 malicious extensions from the Chrome Web Store that had a collective download count of 75 million. The extensions could alter search results and push spam or unwanted ads. Cybersecurity researcher Wladimir Palant discovered that the extensions featured legitimate functionality to keep users unaware of the malicious behavior that came in obfuscated code to deliver the payloads. Avast reported the extensions to Google after confirming their malicious nature, and expanded the list to 32 entries. The extensions were adware that hijacked search results to display sponsored links and paid results, sometimes even serving malicious links.