Securing the Gateway: How Browser Extension Risk Assessment Protects Your Organization

Browser extensions are a normal component of today’s modern web browsers. They serve the purpose of enhancing productivity and workflows of users. However, even with their advantages and enhancements, they bring significant security vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities are often the target of threat actors. Recent attacks targeting browser extensions highlight this risk and the need for urgency in implementing browser extension risk assessments to protect organization’s business critical data.

The Threat of Malicious Browser Extensions

In December 2024, a sophisticated phishing campaign targeting at least 35 Chrome browser extensions were compromised, affecting some 3.7 million users (even more than the 2.6 million users that were initially thought to be affected). 

The attack compromised multiple extensions developed by Cyberhaven, a data loss prevention and security company. One of those extensions was Cyberhaven’s own Security Extension, which alone affected 400,000 users. The compromise was carried out as hackers gained access to developer accounts using phishing attacks. Once in control of developer credentials, they injected malicious code into the legitimate extensions which compromised sensitive data, including cookies, session tokens, and ultimately led to unauthorized account access and data leakage.

By January 2025, Spin.AI uncovered eight additional compromised extensions which increased the total number of affected users to 3.7 million. These incidents emphasize the urgent need for organizations to assess and mitigate browser extension threats proactively.

Real-World Consequences of Compromised Extensions

• Data exfiltration: The goal of attackers with malicious extensions is often to compromise sensitive information and intentionally leak this data. This can lead to intellectual property theft and tremendous financial losses, compliance violations, and fines.
• Credential theft: If login details are compromised by attackers using malicious extensions, these can be used to hack into secure systems under the guise of legitimate users.
• Malware distribution: Compromised extensions installed on end-user systems can be used to distribute additional malware and set up persistence in an environment.
• Unauthorized access: Extensions, even legitimate ones, often ask for excessive permissions. These can be exploited to access or exfiltrate sensitive data from an organization’s infrastructure.

As an example, the December 2024 browser extension attack not only affected individual users but also posed significant risks to enterprise environments relying on these extensions. The potential unauthorized access to session tokens can allow attackers to bypass multi-factor authentication, which can be a tremendous security risk. 

Best Practices for Mitigating Browser Extension Risks

1. Enforce Strict Extension Policies

• Allow Lists & Block Lists: Only permit pre-approved extensions and block high-risk ones.
• Automated Policy Enforcement: Use enterprise security tools to enforce policies organization-wide.

2. Automate Extension Risk Assessments

• Continuous Monitoring: Detect and assess risky extensions in real-time.
• Behavioral Analysis: Identify suspicious activity to prevent potential breaches.

3. Limit Extension Permissions

• Audit Access Controls: Ensure extensions request only necessary permissions.
• Restrict High-Risk Extensions: Block those requiring excessive or unnecessary data access.

4. Strengthen Employee Cybersecurity Awareness

• User Education: Train employees on risks associated with unverified extensions.
• Best Practices: Encourage downloading from trusted sources and reviewing permissions before installation.

5. Conduct Regular Security Audits

• Extension Inventory Management: Track and monitor all browser extensions in use.
• Automated Vulnerability Scanning: Identify and remediate security gaps proactively.

Why Proactive Risk Assessments Are Essential

With thousands of browser extensions in enterprise environments, manual assessments are impractical. Automated security solutions reduce risk exposure while improving operational efficiency.

Organizations managing over 1,000 extensions can save more than two months of labor annually by shifting to automated assessments. This improves response times and strengthens cybersecurity defenses.

How Spin.AI Enhances Browser Extension Security

Organizations today need to fight the cybersecurity risks associated with SaaS apps and browser extensions with intelligent and modern cybersecurity solutions. SpinSPM uses artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to perform automated risk assessments of SaaS applications and browser-based extensions. 

It does all the heavy lifting and levels the playing field with today’s threat actors looking to compromise organizations using these attack vectors. Note the following features:

• Automated risk assessments – Spin.AI can perform real-time evaluation of browser extensions to help detect and mitigate potential threats. 
• Continuous monitoring – Extensions need to be continuously monitored as behaviors can change. Admins and SecOps can use Spin.AI to identify and automatically respond to suspicious activities very quickly.
• Policy enforcement – It allows organizations to create and adopt security policies that control extension installations and permissions. Spin.AI automatically generates a risk score that can be used to enforce compliance with organizational policies and the decided upon risk tolerance of the business.

Wrapping up

The recent attacks using browser extensions as the attack vector serve as a strong reminder of the vulnerabilities related to using browser extensions. Mitigating this risk involves a mulit-layered approach and robust security measures that include proactive risk assessment and implementing policy-based safeguards.

Using Spin.AI helps to level the playing field against sophisticated attacks using SaaS apps and browser extensions as an attack vector. It can save “months of time” by helping organizations shift away from manual cybersecurity processes and risk assessments to an automated approach.Don’t leave your data at risk. Get a Demo of SpinSPM to see how AI-powered risk assessment can protect your critical business information.