Great Suspender Chrome extension yanked for malware infection

Neat Suspender Chrome extension yanked for malware infection — what to practise

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Google has removed a popular Chrome desktop-browser extension called The Great Suspender from the Chrome Web Store, following numerous complaints that the open-source extension's new maintainer had injected information technology with malware.

The Smashing Suspender was used past Chrome users to "append" open up tabs, freeing up their memory. It was particularly useful for computers with 8GB of RAM or less. Often, these users would hit a wall when having more than a dozen or so tabs open up. (Chrome is a notorious memory hog.)

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If you take The Bully Suspender loaded as an extension in other Chromium-based browsers such as Dauntless, Border, Opera or Vivaldi, brand certain it'southward disabled. The extension has already been removed from Chrome users' desktop browsers.

Sneaking suspicions

Suspicions about The Great Suspender engagement back to November, several months after the extension'south original developer appear that he was handing over the project to an anonymous party.

The extension's bodily code began to differ from what was posted on the extension's GitHub page, and included new tracking code and links to mysterious websites.

Yesterday (Feb. iv), Google apparently took The Great Suspender'south Chrome Spider web Store folio down and actively removed it from Chrome users' browsers.

One Reddit user put upwardly a screen grab of a browser notification that informed him that "this extension may be dangerous" and that "'The Bully Suspender' has been disabled because information technology contains malware."

We can't verify if that prototype is real, merely it'due south pretty certain that The Great Suspender is gone from the Chrome Spider web Store. The page returns a 404 "folio not found" fault.

Not everyone knew this was coming

The sudden removal of the extension didn't sit well with users of The Groovy Suspender, many of whom manifestly didn't know about the malware dangers.

"Is anyone else using the great suspender? Chrome only closed all my tabs and told me it's malware," wrote Reddit user shez33. "Is at that place whatever mode to bypass this? Literally the only reason I still use chrome is considering this and session buddy."

"Chrome just disabled The Great Suspender proverb that it is malware," wrote TechDirt editor Mike Masnick on Twitter. "That's the simply extension that makes Chrome bearable with as many tabs as I have open."

Uh... Chrome just disabled The Dandy Suspender maxim that it is malware. That'southward the only extension that makes Chrome endurable with as many tabs as I have open. Anyone know what's going on?!?February 4, 2021

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Such users lost all their open tabs when The Great Suspender disappeared. The extension'south original creator has posted instructions on GitHub on how to recover them.

This isn't the first time a decent Chrome extension has been hijacked by crooks. Far worse are Chrome extensions that spy on users, inject ads and even steal saved information from Solar day One, a problem that dates back years. Google has gotten better well-nigh policing the Chrome Web Shop, but information technology even so has a long style to go.

To avoid having malicious Chrome extensions in your browser, use only those extensions you absolutely demand and disable the remainder in chrome://extensions/. Before installing an extension, check its user ratings in the Chrome Web Store to see if anyone mentions suspicious behavior.

And if you're worried nearly Chrome taking up too much retention, try using Brave or Edge instead. Both are almost exactly the same equally Chrome, right downwardly to treatment Google Docs properly, merely use upwardly a lot less RAM.

Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom's Guide focused on security and privacy. He has also been a dishwasher, fry cook, long-haul driver, code monkey and video editor. He's been rooting around in the information-security space for more than than 15 years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom's Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown up in random Television receiver news spots and even moderated a panel discussion at the CEDIA home-engineering science conference. Y'all can follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.