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Malicious VSCode extensions with millions of installs discovered (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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[–] 93 points 2 years ago* (10 children)

What makes this even more sneaky is that JetBrains has a theme called "Darcula".

So, with a wider generic theme called Dracula and themes that duplicate JetBrains Darcula theme, it is no surprise that "Darcula Official" is being installed.
It's more than just a typosquat

Edit:
But why can a theme make web requests?!

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  • [–] 66 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    But why can a theme make web requests?!

    Because we live in a broken world and nothing matters.

    On a more serious note, it's a pretty horrifying misfeature. What's even more worrying is that by all appearances Microsoft doesn't give a shit, if they apparently didn't even bother removing the malicious extensions that were reported. Not that I'm surprised, but still.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago

    But why can a theme make web requests?!

    Why can a Word or Excel file execute shell code? Why does M$ SQL Server have xp_cmdshell?

    Because we live in a broken world and nothing matters.

    Because devs chose to live in this part of the world, dictated by M$ and other large companies, who just don't care.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    It's not a theme here, it's an extension.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    I think that's how themes are distributed for VSCode, right?
    With VSCode, everything is an extension.
    But the vscode marketplace seems to have filters for themes, so there must be some way to differentiate them.

    I think extensions need a permissions system

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    You can install themes directly from the theme selector.

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