Chrome extensions with 13.4 million installs caught hijacking searches

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.

A new report by Socket's John Tuckner expands on the researcher's April 2025 discovery of 57 Chrome extensions with 6 million users, adding 264 newly identified add-ons with another 8.7 million users.

"These extensions were created by a handful of organized operators all working from the same idea: quietly take over the browser's default search engine, route every query through a suspicious proxy server, and collect partner referral payments from Yahoo or Bing under a syndication partner ID," explained Tuckner.

The extensions, with the full list shared at the bottom of Socket's report, pretend to be PDF converters, manual finders, safe search, and AI search tools. However, for the most part, the extensions simply redirect users' searches through a series of sites until they land on Bing or Yahoo.