Microsoft’s VS Code Marketplace: A Playground for Hackers or Just a Comedy of Errors?
Researchers discovered a new way to slam Microsoft by exposing lax cybersecurity in Visual Studio Code. They created a malicious theme, “Darcula,” which compromised sensitive data from major companies. The experiment revealed over 1,283 extensions with known malicious code in the VS Code marketplace.
Hot Take:
Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code Marketplace: Come for the themes, stay for the malware! It seems like the VS Code Marketplace is more like a digital haunted house – enter if you dare, and don’t forget to duck the flying malicious extensions!
Key Points:
- Researchers created a malicious theme named “Darcula” to test the security of the VS Code Marketplace.
- The theme included code to steal sensitive information and was downloaded by numerous companies.
- Among the victims were a publicly listed company worth $483 billion and a national justice court network.
- Further investigation revealed 1,283 extensions with known malicious code, amounting to 229 million installs.
- Over 8,000 extensions were found communicating with hardcoded IP addresses, with many running unknown executables.
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