Threats Tagged 'affiliate fraud'

SearchJack is a coordinated campaign involving 23 deceptive Chrome browser extensions that hijack users' default search engines to monetize search traffic. These extensions disguise themselves as productivity tools, satellite imagery viewers, maps, and news readers but redirect search queries through affiliate monetization middleware, primarily Yahoo Hosted Search programs. The campaign affects approximately 758,000 users and involves 22 publishers and at least 8 monetization brokers. The extensions use manifest-only wrappers with chrome_settings_overrides and runtime obfuscation to evade detection. They also feature false privacy claims, suspicious review patterns, and anonymous publishers with fictitious corporate identities, enabling monetization of user searches without accountability.