Beware of Copyfish, the Chrome Browser Extension Compromised with Malware

Hackers have hijacked Copyfish the add-on to Chrome browser of Google. The criminals gained control over Chrome Web Store A/C belonging to A9t9 software the developer team from Germany that is responsible for the widely used browser extension, while utilized the same A/C for distributing spam messages.

Copyfish is used when Chrome users want to pull out text from video, PDFs and image files. There are a remarkably 37,500 and more users of Copyfish. The hijack of Chrome add-on went further to equip the extension with stuff to help inject advertisements.

An employee during the attack got one e-mail impersonating Google. The electronic mail indicated that A9t9 required making Copyfish up-to-date right away else it would get pushed out of Chrome Web Store. A web-link embedded on the e-mail apparently would give further details.

Obviously, the web-link was harmful. For, it led onto one phishing page to supposedly help sign into Google. The unwitting employee had typed in the password on this page that was to access the developer's A/C. Next day, Copyfish was revised, but the developer hadn't done it. Naturally, the revision was by the criminals who had stolen the password via their trick applied to the employee. The fake Copyfish update started injecting spam or advertisements into various websites. Komando.com posted this, August 1, 2017.

The developer team A9t9 said it was unable to any longer control Copyfish while couldn't even disable the Chrome extension within impacted Chrome browsers. According to the team, hitherto the update appears as usual adware hack; however, with no control on Copyfish by them, the hackers may revise the add-on again. It's also not possible to disable it since it has exited from the team's developer account.

One Copyfish consumer while writing on HackerNews drew attention to the hackers who after compromising Copyfish used Node Package Manager and UNPKG.com for spreading adware through the add-on. According to the company, it's presently coordinating with Google for a fix.

A9t9 software has advised end-users not to load Copyfish, which's now laced with malware, while erase it from the Chrome Web-browser running on their systems.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/9/2017