Back in October I asked here why searching for “Norton Password Manager” on Chrome Web Store brings up five completely unrelated extensions which all show up before the actual Norton Password Manager. Now I know the answer: some extension authors figured out how to use translations in order to mess with the search results. https://palant.info/2025/01/08/how-extensions-trick-cws-search/

I found 920 extensions using this approach. Most of them fall into a few large extension clusters that are spamming Chrome Web Store. For example, I could attribute 122 extensions to the Kodice / Karbon Project / BroCode cluster that I covered in June 2023 originally. Another 100 extensions belong to the PDF Toolbox cluster that originally appeared on my blog in May 2023. The ZingFront / ZingDeck / BigMData cluster is one I also researched back in 2023 but didn’t publish – 223 extensions.

There is also a cluster that was new to me and which I couldn’t really tie to a company name (apart from finding two red herrings). There seems to be a Ukrainian/Russian language part and a Farsi (?) language part here, and it’s hundreds of extensions despite only 55 of them qualifying for the list in this article.

Now that this is out, are you as excited as me to see what Google will do about this?

#google #cws #ChromeExtensions #chrome #ChromeWebStore #spam

How extensions trick CWS search

There are hundreds of extensions in Chrome Web Store using bogus “translation” to mess up search results. Most extensions are produced by a few extensions clusters who are flooding Chrome Web Store with spam.

^{Almost Secure}