Chrome extensions with 13.4M installs caught hijacking searches
Smith-7831
12 points
2 comments
October 30, 2026
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Discussion Highlights (2 comments)
mschuster91
> A massive search-hijacking campaign involving 319 Chrome extensions with a combined 13.4 million reported installations redirected users' searches through tracking servers to generate advertising revenue from Bing and Yahoo. I've recently published my first extension (I'll make a show hn in a few weeks when it's more polished)... and despite it not being advertised anywhere , it took less than 24 hours for the first "pitches" to drop in my mailbox. Some wanted to sell consultancy services, others wanted to buy the extension outright... it's pure madness.
treadmill
The source article has a lot more details the bleeping ripoff. https://socket.dev/blog/searchjacked