Saw this stat in a browser extension report this week and it bugged me enough to go check my own browser. Found three extensions that had silently expanded scope since I installed them. One was a writing assistant I've had for like two years that now reads cookies. I never approved that. There was no prompt, it just... updated.

The wider numbers are worse. AI extensions are 6x more likely than regular ones to change permissions post-install. 3x more likely to read cookies. 2.5x more likely to inject scripts.

And these things skate past every tool we have. EDR doesn't care. Proxy logs show nothing. The extension just sits there quietly accumulating access until somebody actually opens chrome://extensions and reads what it can do now.

Go check yours. I'd bet money you find at least one.