SafeBrowse Chrome extension found to be secretly mining for cryptocurrency

Recently it was discovered that the Pirate Bay had embedded a JavaScript cryptocurrency miner into the footer of its homepage, and now a popular Chrome extension has been found engaging in similar activity. The SafeBrowse extension purports to block popup ads and skip ad pages that appear before downloads, but in fact it was secretly running a Coin Hive mining tool in the background. With over 140,000 users, SafeBrowse -- which has now been removed from the Chrome Web Store -- was quietly making an income for its developers through clandestine use of CPU time. See also: The Pirate Bay… [Continue Reading]