Chrome API update will kill a bunch of other extensions, not just ad blockers | ZDNet

A planned update to one of the Google Chrome extensions APIs would kill much more than a few ad blockers, ZDNet has learned, including browser extensions for antivirus products, parental control enforcement, and various privacy-enhancing services.

Their criticism echoed concerns from Raymond Hill, the author of the uBlock Origin and uMatrix ad blockers, who first raised the issue with Chrome developers yesterday in a bug report.

The change would also most likely impact all other ad blockers as well, according to Andrey Meshkov, the co-founder of AdGuard, another ad blocker for Chrome.

The biggest of these categories would be extensions developed by antivirus makers and meant to prevent users from accessing malicious sites and for detecting malware before it's being downloaded.

The F-Secure developer's opinion that this would impact almost all security-related Chrome extensions was also echoed by Claudio Guarnieri, Senior Tehnologist at Amnesty International.

The NoScript Firefox add-on has a mythical reputation amongst security professionals, and many have been asking Maone for a Chrome version for years.

NoScript, is so good at blocking JavaScript code, that's it's one of the extensions included by default with the privacy-hardened Tor Browser. If Chrome developers go ahead with the planned changes, there may never be a NoScript version for Chrome, mainly because NoScript wouldn't be able to work just as efficiently as it does on Firefox.