Security researchers from Secure Annex have noted the rising popularity of a new method for monetizing browser extensions, wherein users of the extensions are formed into a distributed network used for scraping (indexing website content). Users' systems act as web bots and proxies to download website content \u2014 the installed browser extension receives instructions for indexing sites from an external server, after which it launches the requested content download in a separate hidden iframe and sends the retrieved data to an external service. In the Chrome, Firefox, and Edge directories, this monetization scheme has been identified in 245 extensions, totaling 909,000 installations. <\/p>\n
The operation is organized through the integration of an open JavaScript library, mellowtel.js, into the code of browser extensions, provided under the LGPLv3 license. The library is developed by the Mellowtel project, promoting a new monetization platform that can be applied not only in browser extensions but also in applications based on Flutter and Electron frameworks. The main idea of the platform is that developers of browser extensions and applications can earn money not through displaying advertisements or questionable methods like selling data that compromise user privacy, but by performing tasks for indexing web content to train AI systems. <\/p>\n
The need for data by AI companies to train models has led to the emergence of numerous bots that index websites without reasonable limits on request intensity and ignore robots.txt indexing rules. Since these bots create a huge parasitic load on servers<\/a>, disrupt the proper functioning of systems, and consume administrators' time, there has been an active effort to block them recently (for example, the content delivery network Cloudflare has implemented an option to block such bots by default). <\/p>\n AI companies are willing to pay for indexing, and the Mellowtel platform has provided a way to meet this demand by engaging everyday users in the process of collecting data from websites. The platform shares 55% of the revenue earned from collaborations with AI companies with the extension developers. The project is entirely legitimate and insists that participation in scraping must be voluntary and activated only after explicit user consent. It is implied that users may enable the scraping mode in appreciation to the extension developers and provide them indirect financial support. <\/p>\n The problem is that not all extension developers are ready to work honestly and transparently. Some extensions attempt to covertly enable Mellowtel monetization without user awareness, bypassing the service's rules, which results in users participating in a distributed network for downloading data from websites without explicit consent. Of the 45 Chrome extensions using Mellowtel, 12 have already been blocked by Google for malicious activity. In the Microsoft catalog, 8 out of 129 extensions have been blocked, and in the Mozilla catalog, 2 out of 71 extensions are blocked. The reasons for removal are not detailed, but it is not excluded that incorrect use of Mellowtel was the cause. <\/p>\n The Mellowtel developer stated that to address the issue of potential hidden scraping activation, the service is transitioning to mandatory checks for all extensions utilizing Mellowtel to ensure scraping is disabled by default (activation only after explicit user consent) and that there is a visible button for disabling it. Requests for tasks from extensions that have not passed the verification will be quarantined and ignored. <\/p>\n During the operation of the extension, those using the Mellowtel library establish a websocket connection to an external server hosted in the AWS cloud, through which they transmit information about user availability, location, bandwidth, and the activation of scraping support by the user. Periodically, heartbeat requests are sent through the connection to check the availability of the client. When there are tasks to download content, a hidden iframe is inserted into the pages viewed by the user, from which scraping is performed. <\/p>\n To load external pages from the iframe inserted while viewing other sites, the library temporarily bypasses the browser's protection against loading third-party content by stripping the HTTP headers Content-Security-Policy and X-Frame-Options, returning them after the required page has loaded. This stripping is done by modifying network requests using the declarativeNetRequest API (to access this API, the extension requests separate permissions). Temporarily disabling the Content-Security-Policy and X-Frame-Options headers negatively impacts security, as it removes built-in protection against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks for a time. <\/p>\n The Mellowtel platform is affiliated with Olostep, which offers an API for scraping that can bypass bot protection and simultaneously perform up to 100,000 requests per minute. Such service activity, when applied in the context of one site, can be compared to a distributed DoS attack. The service can also potentially use users as proxies to extract content from private sites that are only accessible within subnets that the user can access through. 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Source: opennet.ru<\/a> <\/p>","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"excerpt":{"rendered":"