There’s a massive security blind spot hidden in plain sight: software extensions.
Software extensions have the duality of being both ubiquitous and poorly secured.
Some stats:
- 185K Chrome extensions, 60K VS Code extensions
- 99% of enterprise users have at least one extension; half have 10+
- 53% have installed extensions with high/critical permission scopes
- The average developer has installed 40 extensions in their IDE
The permissions model of extensions effectively grants them the same permissions as a user. Given that these extensions don’t run in sandboxed environments, they can execute anything on the host machine without a user receiving any feedback. These software artifacts have full access to the entire host environment: the organizational codebase, version control, and sometimes even secrets/keys. Combine this with the fact that extensions aren’t visible to current EDR tools (Crowdstrike, Carbon Black) because they’re integrated into applications themselves, and the security risk seems more non-trivial.
Although these software extensions are dynamic and constantly evolving, the current methods to assess their security are inherently static (i.e. verification badges). This mismatch has been upstream of recent security incidents around software extensions, i.e. TigerJack, WhiteCobra, Cyberhaven.
It’s only the beginning. The beauty of extensions in IDEs is that they effectively let a developer shape and mold their product into what works best for them; VSCode’s robust supply of extensions is a huge reason for their advantage over JetBrains. MCP effectively gives all applications “extensibility hooks” and opens them up for their functionality to be extended. While this is exciting, it also increases the security risk multifold, effectively multiplying the problem manifesting in IDEs/browsers across every MCP host application.
Spending a lot of time thinking about this - if you are too, I’m at proby@work-bench.com let's chat!
👋 I’m a Researcher at Work-Bench, a Seed stage enterprise-focused VC fund based in New York City. Our sweet spot for investment at Seed correlates with building out a startup’s early go-to-market motions.
