How 319 Chrome Extensions Redirected Searches and What It Means for Users and SOCs
A sprawling network of 319 browser extensions has been tied to search hijacking that affected an estimated 13.4 million users over the past decade. Marketed as benign utilities — PDF converters, safe search tools, finders, and AI helpers — these add-ons quietly routed user queries through operator-controlled servers before forwarding results to mainstream engines such as Yahoo or Bing. The result: referral revenue for operators, a persistent intermediary with visibility…