Google got duped by a fake ad blocker, and 37,000 people accidentally downloaded adware

Some 37,000 people downloaded a spam version of the "AdBlock Plus" extension from Google after a fraudulent ad blocking extension snuck through Google Chrome's verification process and appeared in the Chrome Web Store yesterday.

It's easy to see why Google (and some 37,000 people) were tricked — the developer who packaged the adware into an extension used the name of an already popular and legitimate extension, AdBlock Plus.

Additionally, the bogus page in the Chrome store came with reviews. In short, the fraudulent extension looked pretty realistic. Twitter user SwiftOnSecurity, who regularly tweets about web security, posted an image of the devious extension: Read more...