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Fake ad blocker breaks PCs in new malware extension scam
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Fake browser extensions are nothing new, but this one takes things a step further by deliberately breaking your computer to scare you into infecting it.
Security researchers have uncovered a malicious Chrome and Edge extension called NexShield that pretends to be a fast, privacy-friendly ad blocker. Once installed, it crashes your browser on purpose and then tricks you into “fixing” the problem by running dangerous commands on your own PC.
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MALICIOUS GOOGLE CHROME EXTENSIONS HIJACK ACCOUNTS
A fake Chrome and Edge extension called NexShield crashes browsers to trick users into running malicious commands. (Sina Schuldt/picture alliance via Getty Images)
How the NexShield ad blocker scam works
NexShield was promoted as a lightweight ad blocker supposedly created by Raymond Hill, the real developer behind the popular uBlock Origin extension. That claim was false, but it helped the extension look legitimate enough to spread through online ads and search results before it was taken down from the Chrome Web Store.
Once installed, NexShield immediately starts abusing Chrome or Edge in the background. Researchers at Huntress found that it opens endless internal browser connections until your system runs out of memory (via Bleeping Computer). Tabs freeze, CPU usage spikes, RAM fills up and the browser eventually hangs or crashes completely.
After you restart the browser, NexShield displays a scary pop-up warning that claims your system has serious security problems. When you click to “scan” or “fix” the issue, you’re shown instructions telling you to open Command Prompt and paste a command that’s already been copied to your clipboard.
That single paste is the trap. The command launches a hidden PowerShell script that downloads and runs malware. To make detection harder, the attackers delay the payload execution for up to an hour after installation, creating distance between the extension and the damage it causes.
Why this fake browser extension attack is especially dangerous
This campaign is a new variation of the well-known ClickFix scam, which relies on convincing you to run commands yourself. Huntress calls this version CrashFix because instead of faking a system failure, it causes a real one.
In corporate environments, the attack delivers a Python-based remote access tool called ModeloRAT. This malware allows attackers to spy on systems, run commands, change system settings, add more malware and maintain long-term access. Researchers say the threat group behind it, tracked as KongTuke, appears to be shifting focus toward enterprise networks where the payoff is higher.
Home users weren’t the primary target in this campaign, but that doesn’t mean they’re safe. Even if the final payload was unfinished for consumer systems, uninstalling the extension alone is not enough. Some malicious components can remain behind. The biggest danger here isn’t a browser bug. It’s trust. The attack works because it looks like a helpful fix from a trusted tool, and it pressures you to act quickly while your system feels broken.
“Microsoft Defender provides built in protections to help identify and stop malicious or unwanted browser extensions and the harmful behaviors associated with them,” Tanmay Ganacharya, VP of Microsoft Threat Protection, told CyberGuy. “Our security technologies are designed to detect and mitigate tactics like the ones described in this campaign, and they are continuously updated to help keep customers safe. We encourage consumers and organizations to follow our security best practices for reducing exposure to social engineering based threats. Guidance on strengthening your security posture against techniques like this can be found in our blog, Think Before You Click(Fix): Analyzing the ClickFix Social Engineering Technique, on the Microsoft Security blog.”
We also reached out to Google for comment.
7 steps you can take to stay safe from malicious browser extensions
A few smart habits and the right tools can dramatically reduce your risk, even when malicious extensions slip past official app stores.
1) Only install extensions from trusted publishers
Before installing any browser extension, check the publisher name, official website and update history. Reputable tools clearly identify their developer and have years of user reviews. Be cautious of “new” extensions that claim to come from well-known creators, especially if the name or branding looks slightly off.
2) Never run unknown commands
No legitimate browser extension will ever ask you to open Command Prompt or paste a command to fix an issue. That’s a massive red flag. If something breaks your browser and then tells you to run system commands, close it and seek help from a trusted source.
3) Use a strong antivirus
Strong antivirus software can detect malicious scripts, suspicious PowerShell activity and remote access tools like ModeloRAT. This is especially important because these attacks rely on delayed execution that basic defenses might miss.
The best way to safeguard yourself from malicious links that install malware, potentially accessing your private information, is to have strong antivirus software installed on all your devices. This protection can also alert you to phishing emails and ransomware scams, keeping your personal information and digital assets safe.
Get my picks for the best 2026 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices at Cyberguy.com.
MALICIOUS MAC EXTENSIONS STEAL CRYPTO WALLETS AND PASSWORDS
After freezing your browser, the rogue extension urges users to paste a PowerShell command that installs malware. (Annette Riedl/picture alliance via Getty Images)
4) Use a password manager to limit fallout
If malware gains access to your system, stored browser passwords are often the first target. A password manager keeps credentials encrypted and separate from your browser, reducing the risk of account takeover even if something slips through.
Next, see if your email has been exposed in past breaches. Our No. 1 password manager pick includes a built-in breach scanner that checks whether your email address or passwords have appeared in known leaks. If you discover a match, immediately change any reused passwords and secure those accounts with new, unique credentials.
Check out the best expert-reviewed password managers of 2026 at Cyberguy.com.
5) Keep Windows, Chrome and Edge fully updated
Security updates don’t just patch bugs. They also improve protection against malicious extensions, script abuse and unauthorized system changes. Turn on automatic updates so you’re not relying on memory to stay protected.
6) Consider an identity theft protection service
If malware ever runs on your system, assume personal data could be at risk. Identity protection services can monitor for misuse of your information, alert you early and help with recovery if fraud occurs.
Identity Theft companies can monitor personal information like your Social Security Number (SSN), phone number and email address, and alert you if it is being sold on the dark web or being used to open an account. They can also assist you in freezing your bank and credit card accounts to prevent further unauthorized use by criminals.
See my tips and best picks on how to protect yourself from identity theft at Cyberguy.com.
7) Reduce your online footprint with a data removal service
Many attacks become more effective when criminals already have your personal details. Data removal services help pull your information from broker sites, making it harder for attackers to craft convincing follow-up scams or targeted phishing.
While no service can guarantee the complete removal of your data from the internet, a data removal service is really a smart choice. They aren’t cheap, and neither is your privacy. These services do all the work for you by actively monitoring and systematically erasing your personal information from hundreds of websites. It’s what gives me peace of mind and has proven to be the most effective way to erase your personal data from the internet. By limiting the information available, you reduce the risk of scammers cross-referencing data from breaches with information they might find on the dark web, making it harder for them to target you.
Check out my top picks for data removal services and get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web by visiting Cyberguy.com.
Get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web: Cyberguy.com.
FAKE ERROR POPUPS ARE SPREADING MALWARE FAST
Security researchers say the NexShield ad blocker scam deliberately overloads memory to force a system crash. (Photo by Sebastian Gollnow/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Kurt’s key takeaway
Cybercriminals are getting better at blending technical tricks with psychological pressure. Instead of relying on exploits alone, they break things on purpose and wait for you to panic. If a browser extension crashes your system and then tells you to “fix” it by running commands, stop immediately. The safest response is not to fix the problem fast, but to question why you’re being asked to fix it at all.
How many browser extensions are installed on your computer right now? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.
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A long time ago, in 2004, the Federal Communications Commission laid down a rule designed to prevent a monopoly: No one company could broadcast to more than 39 percent of all the TV households in the United States. But then Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025. Brendan Carr became FCC chairman and immediately kicked off a deregulatory initiative called “Delete, Delete, Delete,” in which Carr vowed to get rid of “every rule, regulation, or guidance document” that placed “unnecessary regulatory burdens” on companies. And within months, Nexstar, which already owned over 200 stations nationwide and had hit its ownership cap, announced that it had entered an agreement to purchase its rival, Tegna, for an estimated $6.2 billion — something that could only happen, however, if Carr agreed to change the FCC’s rules.
If you ask Nexstar why it’s pursuing a merger that would give it control of over 80 percent of the market, it’d point to Big Tech as the culprit. As advertisers take their money to Netflix, YouTube, and other digital streamers, linear television — the local television news, the broadcast affiliates, the basic cable networks — has suffered, forcing them to consolidate and shut down newsrooms. In that sense, Nexstar argued, the merger would help it compete for ad revenue with the streaming services, thereby building more robust local journalism. However, the merger’s opponents believe that this is a basic violation of antitrust laws and principles — not to mention the danger of letting one company have editorial control over the vast majority of America’s local television newsrooms.
But the second Trump administration handles regulatory hurdles a little differently than others, and companies have found that it’s faster to get what they want if they bypass the agencies and talk (read: suck up) to Trump directly. And when Nexstar did so publicly, it confirmed its opponents’ fears about political influence. Last September, in the fraught weeks after the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, Nexstar announced it would no longer broadcast Jimmy Kimmel Live! — a response to Carr’s claim that the FCC could revoke the broadcast licenses of TV stations that aired the comedian’s comments related to Kirk. It briefly led to ABC suspending Kimmel’s show, though ABC and Nexstar soon reversed their decision after a massive nationwide backlash and an ABC boycott.
However, Nexstar’s loyalty to Trump himself was not enough to win over his most powerful MAGA supporters. Newsmax, a cable news network with a deeply pro-Trump bent, and its CEO, longtime Trump donor and outside adviser Chris Ruddy, filed a lawsuit objecting to the merger, claiming that Nexstar’s anticompetitive behavior would force channels like his off the air with steeper carriage fees. He specifically accused Nexstar of jacking up the fees for stations to carry Newsmax, while offering its similar network, NewsNation, for much cheaper.
The Nexstar-Tegna MAGA makeover then took a more subtle turn. NewsNation hired the pro-Trump Fox News commentator Katie Pavlich and gave her her own primetime show. (The network had already hired a slew of former Fox journalists as well.) Around this time, a political group called Keep News Local began airing ads in DC that seemed to directly address Trump, praising him for having “defeated the fake news monopolies before through independent voices and local news” and claiming that the Nexstar-Tegna merger was “crucial for MAGA to survive.” (A little self-contradictory and mildly illogical, but it’s the kind of stuff that Trump likes to hear.) When I last spoke to Ruddy in February, I asked if he’d worried that the dark money going into Keep News Local would sway Trump, and he chose his words carefully: “I think at the end of the day, Trump makes up his own mind. I’m not sure he’s going to be influenced by an ad campaign.”
For months, no one could accurately predict if Trump would override Carr’s wishes and bless the deal, as he’s often done for other companies facing regulatory scrutiny. Trump’s Truth Social posts about the merger have been a good indicator of how precarious the merger has been and who’s been able to influence him at any given moment: Last November, he blasted the deal as an “EXPANSION OF THE FAKE NEWS NETWORKS,” but by February, he posted that the deal would “help knock out the Fake News because there will be more competition.”
Several current and former NewsNation employees told Status at the time that they feared that the parent company was steering NewsNation away from the centrist, “unbiased” reputation they’d long cultivated. “A lot of people within the network believe that the network has gone hard right to appeal to Trump and Brendan Carr,” one former employee told Status. Coincidentally, days before the deal was finalized, NewsNation began ramping up its explicitly pro-Trump content, tweeting a clip of CNN’s Kaitlan Collins being berated by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, along with the comment “Just going to leave this here.”
When Trump greenlit the merger in mid-March, but before the FCC’s three commissioners could vote on whether to waive the ownership cap, Nexstar and Tegna immediately announced a new complication: Tegna and Nexstar had already started merging. Tegna was no more and CEO Mike Steib had already sold $22.6 million of his company stock.
In response, eight state attorneys general and satellite TV operator DirectTV, which had already been planning to file separate federal antitrust suits against the merger, asked US District Judge Troy Nunley in Sacramento for an emergency restraining order that would prevent Nexstar from taking over Tegna’s assets. The order was granted on March 27th and on April 17, Nunley issued a formal injunction, ruling that Tegna must be operated as an independent financial entity, and Nexstar must take steps to ensure it remains separate from Tegna before further legal proceedings.
For now, Nunley has allowed the states and DirecTV to combine their cases, in which both argue that the merger was a clear violation of antitrust laws and would crush news competition.
Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats in Congress are furious at Carr. On March 30th, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) sent the chairman a joint letter admonishing him for allowing his staff to waive the regulations to let the merger pass, instead of having the full commission of political appointees — one from the Biden administration — vote on it. “Under these circumstances,” they wrote, “any subsequent vote risks being largely procedural rather than a genuine exercise of commission responsibility.” They also pointed out that their hasty approval without the commission’s approval would now complicate the merger financially: “In a transaction of this scale, where integration proceeds quickly and unwinding becomes impractical, delay in judicial review can insulate the decision from meaningful challenge.” Notably, though they share similar ideological views on the media and deregulation, Cruz and Carr have frequently clashed over how to achieve their objectives. Cruz previously slammed Carr as a “mafioso,” for instance, for the way he’d used the FCC to silence Kimmel.
But even if it’s legally paused, the journalistic merger’s fallout has started to hit local news. NPR’s David Folkenfirk reported on Tuesday that Tegna journalists had already started receiving orders to stop broadcasting content from major broadcasters like ABC, CBS, and NBC — media outlets being targeted by Carr — and instead begin airing content from Nexstar’s NewsNation.
- Brendan Carr’s views on using the FCC to punish major broadcasters was outlined pretty extensively in the chapter he authored in Project 2025, an initiative led by the conservative Heritage Foundation on how to reform the federal bureaucracy to be more favorable to the American right.
- Exactly how much is local television losing to digital? According to industry publication NewscastStudio, in an investor call defending the purchase, Nexstar chairman Perry Sook cited a market research study from Borrell Associates, which found that “digital advertising in local markets exceeds $100 billion, compared to just $25 billion for local linear television advertising, with nearly two-thirds of digital ad dollars flowing to five major technology companies.”
- If you want to see exactly how much Keep Local News was trying to suck up to Trump, the ads are archived here.
- The Vergecast has a long-running segment called “Brendan Carr is a dummy.”
- The LA Times reported on last week’s preliminary hearings in front of Nunley, and how lawyers for Nexstar, the states, and DirecTV plan to argue their case.
- The Desk has insights from Kirk Varner, a former TV newsroom director, on how the case could go.
- Andrew Liptak covered Nexstar’s previous acquisition sprees for The Verge in 2018.
- Adi Robertson walks through exactly how the Kimmel suspension was an attack on free speech.
- Brendan Carr keeps trying to convince people that he’s not threatening to suspend broadcast licenses for reporting on unfavorable things like the Iran war, reports Lauren Feiner.
- The Vergecast has a long-running segment called “Brendan Carr is a dummy.”
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A Chinese-built humanoid robot beat the human half-marathon world record in Beijing on Sunday, marking a breakthrough moment in a high-stakes global race for technological dominance.
A robot developed by Chinese smartphone maker Honor completed the 21-kilometer (13-mile) race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, beating the human record of about 57 minutes set by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo last month.
The performance marked a dramatic improvement from last year’s inaugural event, when the top robot finished in more than 2 hours and 40 minutes.
Dozens of humanoid robots competed alongside about 12,000 human runners, navigating a parallel course to avoid collisions.
CHINA’S COMPACT HUMANOID ROBOT SHOWS OFF BALANCE AND FLIPS
A robot crosses the finish line in the Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon held in the outskirts of Beijing on April 19, 2026. (Andy Wong/AP)
Nearly half of the robots ran using autonomous navigation, while others relied on remote control, organizers said.
Despite the breakthrough, the race still saw glitches, with some robots stumbling at the start or veering into barriers.
Engineers said the winning robot was designed to mimic elite athletes, featuring long legs of about 37 inches and advanced cooling systems to sustain performance.
US TARGETS CHINESE ROBOTS OVER SECURITY FEARS
“Looking ahead, some of these technologies might be transferred to other areas,” said Du Xiaodi, an engineer with the Honor team. “For example, structural reliability and liquid-cooling technology could be applied in future industrial scenarios.”
Team members celebrate next to the winning Honor Lightning humanoid robot during a medal ceremony after the second Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon in Beijing, China, on April 19, 2026. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)
Spectators reacted with a mix of amazement and unease at the machines’ rapid progress.
“It’s the first time robots have surpassed humans, and that’s something I never imagined,” Sun Zhigang, who attended the event with his son, told The Associated Press.
HUMANOID ROBOTS HIT MASS PRODUCTION IN CHINA
“The robots’ speed far exceeds that of humans,” spectator Wang Wen told the outlet. “This may signal the arrival of sort of a new era.”
A robot starts alongside human runners at the Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Half Marathon on the outskirts of Beijing on April 19, 2026. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
Experts say the race highlights China’s accelerating push to dominate robotics and artificial intelligence, even as widespread commercial use of humanoid robots remains limited, according to Reuters. The experts said Chinese robotics firms are still working to develop the AI software needed for humanoids to match the efficiency of human factory workers.
Runners take pictures of a humanoid robot during the second Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon in Beijing on April 19, 2026. (Haruna Furuhashi/Pool Photo via AP)
“The future will definitely be an AI era,” engineering student Chu Tianqi told Reuters. “If people don’t know how to use AI now … they will definitely become obsolete.”
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The competition underscores a broader technological race between China and the United States, as Beijing invests heavily in advanced robotics as part of its long-term economic strategy.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
According to Nikkei Asia, even as suppliers ramp up DRAM production, manufacturers are only expected to meet 60 percent of demand by the end of 2027. SK Group chairman has even said that shortages could last until 2030.
The world’s largest memory makers — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — are all working to add new fabrication capacity, but almost none of it will be online until at least 2027, if not 2028. SK opened a fab in Cheongju in February, but that is the only increase in production among the three for 2026.
Nikkei says that production would need to increase by 12 percent a year in 2026 and 2027 to meet demand. But according to Counterpoint Research, an increase of only 7.5 percent is planned.
The new facilities will primarily focus on producing high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which is used in AI data centers. With the companies already prioritizing HBM over general-purpose DRAM used in computers and phones, it’s not clear how much these new fabs will help alleviate the price crunch facing consumer electronics. Everything from phones and laptops, to VR headsets and gaming handhelds have seen price increases due to the RAM shortage.
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