A massive set of 737 free VPN and proxy extensions have been found to mainly target Russian-speaking users seeking access to blocked services with an aim to intercept browser traffic and route them through a proxy infrastructure. The extensions, published across at least 40 Chrome Web Store developer accounts, racked up 75,486 installs. The censorship circumvention extensions "route the user's entire browser session through SOCKS5 proxies operated by a single provider," security researcher Kush Pandya said. As many as 221 browser add-ons have been removed from the Chrome Web Store, while the remaining 516 extensions have been listed as active. Removed Chrome Extension Resurfaces with Monetization SchemeThe development comes as Netskope Threat Labs highlighted the return of a Google Chrome extension named "AI Sidebar with Deepseek, ChatGPT, Claude, and more."