14 DAY TRIAL // The new Rovio game known as Bad Piggies is highly popular. As expected, cybercriminals are leveraging its popularity in their malicious campaigns.
Barracuda Labs experts have identified a number of shady plugins hosted on Google Chrome’s web store, being advertised as the free online version of Bad Piggies.
However, during installation, the plugins request permission to access data on all websites. This allows them to inject advertisements into several high-ranked sites, such as Yahoo!.
Unfortunately, on October 2, over 82,000 users had already installed the ad-injected plugins from the Chrome web store. Even more worrying is the fact that the number of downloads increases daily.
Experts advise users to always be careful when installing plugins from the Chrome web store. The site may be trustworthy, but some malicious content might end up on it from time to time.
That’s why it’s always recommended to check out the permissions requested by an app before rushing to install it. If it asks for too much, it’s probably malicious.