LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer

Microsoft is running one of the largest corporate espionage operations in modern history. Every time any of LinkedIn’s one billion users visits linkedin.com, hidden code searches their computer for installed software, collects the results, and transmits them to LinkedIn’s servers and to third-party companies including an American-Israeli cybersecurity firm. The user is never asked. Never told. LinkedIn’s privacy policy does not mention it. Because LinkedIn knows each user’s real name, employer, and job title, it is not searching anonymous visitors. It is searching identified people at identified companies. Millions of companies. Every day. All over the world.

BrowserGate
@metin tbh I'm not gonna read all this but I am curious how JavaScript would be capable of doing this
@swellbastion Yeah, good question.
@metin hm maybe when they say installed software they mean browser extensions. I guess that would technically be an accurate descriptor but it's not what I imagine in my head when they say installed software
@swellbastion @metin It is browser extensions, and they do it via some backdoors Chrome intentionally leaves to poke at extensions that don't take measures to block this, along with profiling changes made to the DOM by extensions and correlating those with known behavior of particular extensions. They have some nasty exfiltration-obfuscation techniques going on to get the data back to them indicating that they know what they're doing is unethical and illegal.