That depends on who you believe.
Google, for its part, says less than 1% of all installs include malware.
But a group of university researchers claim 280 million people installed a malware-infected Chrome extension during a three-year period.
“As with any software, extensions can also introduce risk,” wrote the security team.
As revealed in a researchpaper, the trio examined Security-Noteworthy Extensions (SNE) on the Chrome store.
It was found that between July 2020 and February 2023, 346 million users installed SNEs.
At the time, there were almost 125,000 extensions available in the Chrome Web Store.
The researchers suggest Google also monitor extensions for code similarities.
They also noted the lack of maintenance that sees extensions remain on the store long after vulnerabilities are disclosed.
