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Issue metadata

Status: WontFix
Owner: ----
Closed: Mar 2018
Cc:
EstimatedDays: ----
NextAction: ----
OS: ----
Pri: ----
Type: Bug-Security



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Security: Malicious App Hooking into Chrome Pid Running Under "Folding At Home" link to my Gmail Chrome Synced Account

Reported by ebarb...@trading-point.com, Mar 20 2018

Issue description

Hello,

for the last month i have been noticing for our Palo Alto Firewall connection going from My PC to Foreign address Using Destination Port 443 & being blocked by our Application Inspection and Categorized as "Folding at Home",
https://www.securitystronghold.com/gates/folding@home.html 

Doing Some Research, we noticed that the Legitimate Folding At Home Program was able to run successfully using the same PC with Chrome and it wasn't blocked http://folding.stanford.edu/

After Reformating the PC and inspecting Chrome Traffic from the firewall, without Signing in with my Gmail account and Syncing Chrome Data, "Folding At Home" was not Detected, After Only Syncing my gmail account ebarbour@trading-point.com



Blocked Traffic Starts to Appear, we repeated this on many PCs and isolated that its only Linked to my Gmail Account, although No Plugins/Apps or Extension was installed on Chrome !! 

Ended Up Resetting All My Gmail Data and Resyncing Chrome, The Connection now Disappeared

we suspect that a Malware built like Folding@Home app is Hooking On Chrome.exe Executable as it has Same Pid as Chrome and connecting to foreign addresses probably Crypto mining or harvesting Data



 
folding at hom PA 2.png
45.6 KB View Download
folding at hom PA.png
96.5 KB View Download
netstat foreign address.png
7.0 KB View Download
processexplorer.png
89.7 KB View Download
The Target was to identify how this connection was linked to Gmail Address without having any plugin, extension or something else synced except some passwords
Labels: Needs-Feedback
Unfortunately, there's very little to go on here because you are no longer able to reproduce the issue.

Can you please explain explicitly how you determined that "No Plugins/Apps or Extension was installed on Chrome"? A sync'd browser extension is by far the most likely source of unexpected traffic in the circumstances described.

FWIW, the 172.217.* IP addresses in your logs appear to be owned by Google itself.
Apps
Extensions

chrome://extensions/
chrome://apps/

i might have the Chrome Synced Data backed up somewhere, but how i help reproduce



Project Member

Comment 4 by sheriffbot@chromium.org, Mar 21 2018

Cc: elawrence@chromium.org
Labels: -Needs-Feedback
Thank you for providing more feedback. Adding the requester to the cc list.

For more details visit https://www.chromium.org/issue-tracking/autotriage - Your friendly Sheriffbot
Status: WontFix (was: Unconfirmed)
Thanks. Generally, yes, examining those URLs should be sufficient to determine what extensions are installed. If you had local malware installed in the OS, it could result in traffic like this through a variety of means, but it seems unlikely that external malware would be sensitive as to whether or not Chrome sync is enabled.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's anything we can do here without a live repro. If you're ever able to reproduce this in the future, please try to collect a network log (https://www.chromium.org/for-testers/providing-network-details) and we can examine exactly where the traffic is going and what it contains; this will make the report much more actionable.

Project Member

Comment 6 by sheriffbot@chromium.org, Jun 28 2018

Labels: -Restrict-View-SecurityTeam allpublic
This bug has been closed for more than 14 weeks. Removing security view restrictions.

For more details visit https://www.chromium.org/issue-tracking/autotriage - Your friendly Sheriffbot

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