this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
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Malicious VSCode extensions infect Windows with cryptominers (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Edit 2025-04-09 16:42Z - article was updated with a tenth package (Prettier - Code)

A set of ten VSCode extensions on Microsoft's Visual Studio Code Marketplace pose as legitimate development tools while infecting users with the XMRig cryptominer for Monero.

ExtensionTotal researcher Yuval Ronen has uncovered ten VSCode extensions published on Microsoft's portal on April 4, 2025.

The package names are:

  1. Prettier - Code for VSCode (by prettier) - 486K installs
  2. Discord Rich Presence for VS Code (by Mark H) - 189K installs
  3. Rojo – Roblox Studio Sync (by evaera) - 117K installs
  4. Solidity Compiler (by VSCode Developer) - 1.3K installs
  5. Claude AI (by Mark H)
  6. Golang Compiler (by Mark H)
  7. ChatGPT Agent for VSCode (by Mark H)
  8. HTML Obfuscator (by Mark H)
  9. Python Obfuscator for VSCode (by Mark H)
  10. Rust Compiler for VSCode (by Mark H)
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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Don't think it has anything to do with electron. VSCode is just the largest editor that people install extensions for, so it's what makes the most sense to write malware for. If vim was more popular, I'm sure there would be more crypto mining extensions for that (I wonder how many there are? Surely more than zero?)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It also helps its as easy as clicking a button to install an extension... and i wonder how many even bother checks the source of the extension?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

It's also kinda "trusted" in corporations. The one I work for have github blocked for some reason, but any user cam install VS code and extensions by itself.