A Practical Guide to Mitigating Browser Extension Risks in the Wake of the ShadyPanda Campaign
Following the exposure of the long-running "ShadyPanda" campaign—which saw malicious actors compromise popular Chrome and Edge extensions with millions of installs—this article provides a guide for organizations to reduce browser extension risks. The attack demonstrated how a trusted extension can be silently updated to become spyware, stealing session cookies to hijack authenticated SaaS accounts and bypassing multi-factor authentication. To defend against such supply-chain attacks, the article recommends four key steps: 1) Enforce extension allow lists and governance by vetting and approving only necessary extensions; 2) Treat extension access with the same caution as third-party OAuth app access, integrating it into identity management; 3) Conduct regular audits of extension permissions and publisher details; 4) Implement technical monitoring and user awareness programs to detect suspicious extension behavior. The core message is that browsers, as a critical bridge between endpoints and cloud applications, must be managed as part of the SaaS security surface to prevent extensions from becoming a major vulnerability.
https://thehackernews.com/2025/12/a-browser-extension-risk-guide-after.html
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