SECURITY TREE SHAKER Malwarebytes has come out swinging with talk about a Google Chrome extension that could be your new nightmare.

It wouldn't be a day of the week if one company wasn't casting shade on the security precautions of another. Today it is Malwarebytes and its target is Google and the Chrome browser and its use of extensions. These things combine to cause a problem, says Malwarebytes, predictably.

"Chrome extensions are very much like Android Apps as they require certain permissions (access to your contacts, microphone, camera etc) and unfortunately more often than not, they require more rights than they ought to have. Additionally, a lot of people don't really understand what those mean and will install these extensions and forget about them," yells the firm in its alert blurt.

"This makes it an ideal situation for threat actors to aggressively push bogus apps and use a little bit of social engineering to coerce end users into downloading malware-laden extensions."

Threat actors being what they are some efforts have been made to exploit the system and force Chrome users into a security nightmare that looks like a real pain in the ass on video.

"We recently came across a malvertising incident pushing a site forcing us to install a Chrome extension called iCalc. There was no clean way of closing the window and refusing to install this program. As soon as the user moved the mouse close to the address bar or near the close button, an annoying dialog accompanied by a stern audio message would pop up," added the firm.

"This extension had some tell-tale signs of being malicious beyond its aggressive distribution method. Although it was listed in the Chrome store, it had no screenshot information or reviews."

iCalc is an online calculator. Good luck to anyone who downloaded the vanilla-looking extension, and our commiserations. Malwarebytes reckons that the thing stinks.

"A closer look at this app confirmed our suspicions. There was little if nothing about any calculator in there but rather a set of scripts to create a proxy and perform web request interceptions. We noticed that it silently talked back to this domain to retrieve additional commands and updates at regular intervals," the company said.

Malwarebytes reckons that 1,000 people downloaded the extension before it was officially removed from the Chrome store.

The bad news is that the same malware strain quickly made itself known again. The relatively positive news, at least for us, is that now it has a focus on Russia and social networking. Bad news for Google all round, particularly when our most recent focus on Chrome was a positive one about speed improvements.

Malwarebytes reckons that you ought to have a stock-take of your extensions and delete any you do not recognise or that don't look right. µ