
“If not detected and blocked, Adrozek adds browser extensions, modifies a specific DLL per target browser, and changes browser settings to insert additional, unauthorized ads into web pages, often on top of legitimate ads from search engines. “We call this family of browser modifiers Adrozek,” the Microsoft Team wrote. It’s designed to inject adds into search engine results pages on multiple browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Yandex Browser and Mozilla Firefox, according to Microsoft. The malware has been infecting devices since at least May, and was observed on more than 30,000 devices at its peak in August. In a blog post, the Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team calls this family of browser-modification malware Adrozek. That said, it is not as if Google’s store is invulnerable.Microsoft is warning about a new malware strain that infects a user’s device and adds browser extensions and changes settings to insert unauthorized ads into web pages. Microsoft Edge is based on the Chromium engine and supports add-ons from Microsoft and Google stores.

One way to possibly avoid this problem is to download Edge extensions from the Chrome extension store.

“If you have more than just these extensions, and continue to see ad injections, please reply to this comment with a list of your extensions so that the team can investigate further.” The company asked users to help find those malicious add-ons: Microsoft points out there are likely more extensions doing the same. Microsoft Edge users with these extensions should remove them. However, the extensions are not official and were created to fool users. Of course, some of those names are real VPN services.

Users took to Reddit to warn of the problem and Microsoft was quick with a response.

Specifically, some Microsoft Edge users found Google Searches were redirecting them to /xa2/click.html and to other websites. However, Microsoft has removed some malicious extensions over the weekend after complaints from users. Microsoft Edge has an ever-growing selection of web extensions, thanks mostly to the browser now running on Chromium and allowing Chrome web extensions.
