[$] Malware in open-source web extensions
On February 4, millions of browser tabs weresuddenly terminated. Not everyone was surprised; the dozen people who spent the lastfour months waiting for this tragedy to occur watched in relief as thefirst in a rapid stream of GitHubcomments began pouring in. The Great Suspender, a Chrome extension that suspended inactive tabs,with around two-million users, had been forcibly uninstalled because it containedmalware. This was a serious problem for users, in part due to the difficulty inrecovering the lost tabs, but the extension's malevolence had beenpainfully obvious to anyone who cared to investigate it.