Security News > 2021 > February > WARNING — Hugely Popular 'The Great Suspender' Chrome Extension Contains Malware
Google on Thursday removed The Great Suspender, a popular Chrome extension used by millions of users, from its Chrome Web Store for containing malware.
"The old maintainer appears to have sold the extension to parties unknown, who have malicious intent to exploit the users of this extension in advertising fraud, tracking, and more," Calum McConnell said in a GitHub post.
Signs of the extension's shady behavior had been going the rounds since November, leading Microsoft to block the extension on Edge browsers last November.
According to The Register, Dean Oemcke, the extension's original developer, is said to have sold the extension in June 2020 to an unknown entity, following which two new versions were released directly to users via the Chrome Web Store.
Users of the extension can recover the tabs using a workaround here, or as an alternative, can also use the latest version available on GitHub by enabling Chrome Developer mode.
Zdrnja said the adversary created a malicious security add-on that masqueraded as Forcepoint Endpoint Chrome Extension for Windows, which was then installed directly on the browser after enabling Developer mode.