Security researchers from the Socket supply-chain platform recently identified two versions of the Phantom Shuttle extension still operating within the official Chrome marketplace.
Solid breakdown of the Phantom Shuttle threat model. The detail about encoding jQuery to hide hardcoded credentials is sneaky because devs routienly inspect extension code but often skip over recognized librarys thinking they're safe. I once audited an internal Chrome extension for a client and found similiar patterns where malicious code was smuggled through legit-looking dependencies. What really stands out here is the smart routing to 170 domains rather than intercept everything, keeps noise low and maximize credential harvesting.
Well said. This highlights a deeper issue, we still over-trust “known” libraries and official marketplaces. Smart routing and dependency abuse show attackers now optimize for stealth over scale. The question is whether extension security models have fundamentally failed, or if teams are still auditing the wrong layers.
Solid breakdown of the Phantom Shuttle threat model. The detail about encoding jQuery to hide hardcoded credentials is sneaky because devs routienly inspect extension code but often skip over recognized librarys thinking they're safe. I once audited an internal Chrome extension for a client and found similiar patterns where malicious code was smuggled through legit-looking dependencies. What really stands out here is the smart routing to 170 domains rather than intercept everything, keeps noise low and maximize credential harvesting.
Well said. This highlights a deeper issue, we still over-trust “known” libraries and official marketplaces. Smart routing and dependency abuse show attackers now optimize for stealth over scale. The question is whether extension security models have fundamentally failed, or if teams are still auditing the wrong layers.