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Manifest V3 Unveiled: Navigating the New Era of Browser Extensions

Nikolaos Pantelaios, Alexandros Kapravelos

TL;DR

The paper investigates the transition from Manifest V2 to Manifest V3 in Chrome extensions, addressing privacy, security, and performance concerns. It combines a dynamic analysis of 517 malicious V2 extensions converted to V3 with adoption metrics and an open-source dataset, using an autoconverter tool to perform the conversions. The study reports that 87.8% of vulnerable APIs are removed in V3, while 29.8% of converted extensions remain malicious, and 56% can still operate via web_accessible_resources. These findings illuminate the security gains of V3 and the ongoing need for monitoring and mitigations as the extension ecosystem evolves.

Abstract

Introduced over a decade ago, Chrome extensions now exceed 200,000 in number. In 2020, Google announced a shift in extension development with Manifest Version 3 (V3), aiming to replace the previous Version 2 (V2) by January 2023. This deadline was later extended to January 2025. The company's decision is grounded in enhancing three main pillars: privacy, security, and performance. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the Manifest V3 ecosystem. We start by investigating the adoption rate of V3, detailing the percentage of adoption from its announcement up until 2024. Our findings indicate, prior to the 2023 pause, less than 5% of all extensions had transitioned to V3, despite the looming deadline for the complete removal of V2, while currently nine out of ten new extensions are being uploaded in Manifest V3. Furthermore, we compare the security and privacy enhancements between V2 and V3 and we evaluate the improved security attributable to V3's safer APIs, examining how certain APIs, which were vulnerable or facilitated malicious behavior, have been deprecated or removed in V3. We dynamically execute 517 confirmed malicious extensions and we see a 87.8% removal of APIs related to malicious behavior due to the improvements of V3. We discover that only 154 (29.8%) of these extensions remain functional post-conversion. This analysis leads to the conclusion that V3 reduces the avenues for abuse of such APIs. However, despite the reduction in APIs associated with malicious activities, the new Manifest V3 protocol is not immune to such behavior. Our research demonstrates, through a proof of concept, the adaptability of malicious activities to V3. After the proof of concept changes are applied, we showcase 290 (56%) of the examined malicious extensions retain their capability to conduct harmful activities within the V3 framework.

Manifest V3 Unveiled: Navigating the New Era of Browser Extensions

TL;DR

The paper investigates the transition from Manifest V2 to Manifest V3 in Chrome extensions, addressing privacy, security, and performance concerns. It combines a dynamic analysis of 517 malicious V2 extensions converted to V3 with adoption metrics and an open-source dataset, using an autoconverter tool to perform the conversions. The study reports that 87.8% of vulnerable APIs are removed in V3, while 29.8% of converted extensions remain malicious, and 56% can still operate via web_accessible_resources. These findings illuminate the security gains of V3 and the ongoing need for monitoring and mitigations as the extension ecosystem evolves.

Abstract

Introduced over a decade ago, Chrome extensions now exceed 200,000 in number. In 2020, Google announced a shift in extension development with Manifest Version 3 (V3), aiming to replace the previous Version 2 (V2) by January 2023. This deadline was later extended to January 2025. The company's decision is grounded in enhancing three main pillars: privacy, security, and performance. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the Manifest V3 ecosystem. We start by investigating the adoption rate of V3, detailing the percentage of adoption from its announcement up until 2024. Our findings indicate, prior to the 2023 pause, less than 5% of all extensions had transitioned to V3, despite the looming deadline for the complete removal of V2, while currently nine out of ten new extensions are being uploaded in Manifest V3. Furthermore, we compare the security and privacy enhancements between V2 and V3 and we evaluate the improved security attributable to V3's safer APIs, examining how certain APIs, which were vulnerable or facilitated malicious behavior, have been deprecated or removed in V3. We dynamically execute 517 confirmed malicious extensions and we see a 87.8% removal of APIs related to malicious behavior due to the improvements of V3. We discover that only 154 (29.8%) of these extensions remain functional post-conversion. This analysis leads to the conclusion that V3 reduces the avenues for abuse of such APIs. However, despite the reduction in APIs associated with malicious activities, the new Manifest V3 protocol is not immune to such behavior. Our research demonstrates, through a proof of concept, the adaptability of malicious activities to V3. After the proof of concept changes are applied, we showcase 290 (56%) of the examined malicious extensions retain their capability to conduct harmful activities within the V3 framework.
Paper Structure (30 sections, 4 figures, 8 tables)

This paper contains 30 sections, 4 figures, 8 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Manifest V3 Community Collaboration
  4. Categorizing Manifest V3 Changes
  5. Extensions Structure
  6. Tools
  7. Malicious Extension Dataset
  8. Extension Sources from Past Reports
  9. Our Historical Dataset
  10. Methodology
  11. Architecture
  12. Gathering & Verifying the Malicious Datasets
  13. Malicious Categories Labeling
  14. V3 Conversion
  15. Dynamic Analysis
  16. ...and 15 more sections

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: A full description of our architecture including the data collection process, the conversion to Manifest V3 and the dynamic analysis stage.
  • Figure 2: Number of V3 extensions in our database over time
  • Figure 3: Manifest V3 monthly update rate over the past four years to showcase how fast the adoption is happening.
  • Figure 4: How many LoC needed to convert the V2 malicious extensions to a V3 equivalent version before running the dynamic analysis on the V3 ones.