In a headphone market crowded with plastic shells and predictable tuning, Dongguan-based brand SIVGA continues to carve out its niche the old-fashioned way with real wood and old-school wired design. The new SV021 Pro arrives at $179 with handcrafted wooden earcups, a closed-back architecture, and a promise of premium aesthetics without the usual boutique markup.
But in a category where looks can only get you so far, the real question is whether SIVGA’s latest budget-friendly over-ear delivers the sonic performance to match its striking build, or if it’s simply another pretty face in a very competitive field.
Driver Technology
Inside each earcup of the SV021 Pro sits a 50mm dynamic driver developed specifically for this model rather than pulled from a generic parts bin. SIVGA states that considerable in-house tuning and material research went into its design.
The diaphragm uses a five-layer aluminum composite construction, intended to balance rigidity with controlled damping. In practical terms, a stiffer diaphragm can improve transient response and clarity, while proper damping helps prevent unwanted resonance that can blur detail.
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Driving the diaphragm is an ultra-fine black copper-clad aluminum voice coil. This type of voice coil is commonly used to reduce moving mass while maintaining conductivity, which can improve efficiency and responsiveness. SIVGA also claims benefits to perceived resolution and micro-detail retrieval.
The driver assembly itself is mounted within a six-layer reinforced composite housing, engineered to minimize unwanted vibration and reduce distortion by improving structural stability and energy transfer.
The technical story sounds promising on paper. Whether that engineering translates into real-world sonic performance is something best judged in listening — which we’ll dive into next.
Design & Comfort
Before getting to the sound, it’s worth spending a moment on design and comfort because this is an area where SIVGA has built a strong reputation. With the SV021 Pro, the brand continues that tradition. At $179, the overall build quality and material selection feel well above what you typically expect at this price point.
Our review sample came in the lighter beechwood finish. The fine grain pattern is clearly visible and gives the headphones an authentically handcrafted character rather than a synthetic “wood look.” For those who prefer something darker and more understated, SIVGA also offers a zebrawood version, which delivers a similarly premium aesthetic with a subtler visual impact. Whichever finish you choose, the attention to detail in the woodwork stands out immediately.
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The structural components including the headband frame, yokes, and adjustment rails, are constructed from CNC-machined metal. This manufacturing process allows for tight tolerances and consistent precision, contributing to a solid, confidence-inspiring feel. The headphones never come across as fragile or delicate. While I didn’t test their durability with an accidental drop, they feel robust enough to handle normal daily use without anxiety.
Comfort is another area where the SV021 Pro performs well. At 289 grams, it’s relatively lightweight for a full-size closed-back design, and that lower mass pays dividends during longer listening sessions. The earpads are generously padded and notably soft, allowing the headphones to sit securely without creating pressure hotspots. On the head, they largely “disappear,” which is exactly what you want from a daily-use wired model.
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The velour contact surfaces are also a smart choice. They feel gentle against the skin and do a good job of managing heat buildup, reducing that sweaty, sealed-in sensation that can occur with synthetic leather pads — especially in warmer environments.
There is one ergonomic limitation worth noting: the yokes do not swivel. For some listeners, a lack of horizontal articulation can affect how well the earcups conform to the jawline and head shape. In my case, the depth and plushness of the earpads compensated effectively, creating a consistent seal without issue. That said, fit is personal, and those with narrower or more angular head shapes may want to be aware of this design decision.
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SIVGA SV021 Pro (Beechwood)
SIVGA includes a 1.6-meter detachable cable with the SV021 Pro, and it’s noticeably better than the generic rubber leads often bundled at this price. The supplied cable uses a quad-braided design with a fabric outer sheath, giving it a more premium feel while also helping to minimize microphonics. In daily use, it resists kinks and doesn’t retain awkward bends, which makes it easy to manage at a desk or in a portable setup.
The stock termination is 3.5mm single-ended, which will suit most users and devices. That said, those running balanced outputs from modern portable DAC/amps may wish SIVGA had offered a 4.4mm option in the box. Fortunately, the detachable design makes aftermarket upgrades straightforward.
Also included are a simple hemp storage pouch and a 6.35mm adapter for use with full-size amplifiers. With accessories covered, it’s time to focus on what matters most: how the SV021 Pro actually sounds.
Listening
On paper and certainly in the hand, the SV021 Pro checks a lot of boxes. It looks distinctive, feels premium for $179, and remains comfortable over long sessions.
Where things become more complicated is in its tuning.
In practice, the sonic presentation comes across as uneven, with balance issues that are immediately noticeable. Within the first few minutes of listening to familiar reference tracks, it became clear that something was not quite aligned. The frequency response does not feel cohesively voiced, and certain areas of the spectrum draw attention to themselves in ways that disrupt overall musicality.
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That is somewhat surprising given SIVGA’s track record. The brand has demonstrated competent tuning before, and its sister company, Sendy Audio, recently impressed us with the Egret, a model that showed careful tonal balance and refinement. By comparison, the SV021 Pro feels less resolved in its final voicing decisions.
Let us break things down by frequency range, starting with the bass.
Bass
In the low frequencies, the SV021 Pro takes a decidedly heavy handed approach. The bass is elevated to the point where it becomes dominant, introducing bloom that spills into the lower midrange and softens overall clarity.
There is certainly an audience for this kind of presentation. Listeners who prioritize impact over precision may enjoy the added weight, especially with bass driven genres such as drum and bass or electronic music where a strong low end can create a more physical and immersive experience.
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The trade off is control. The excess warmth masks finer details and reduces separation between instruments. Male vocals are particularly affected, often sounding pushed back in the mix. On tracks like “Papaoutai” by Stromae, his voice loses immediacy and presence, as if it is positioned behind the instrumental layer rather than anchored at the forefront where it belongs.
Midrange
By contrast, the midrange feels recessed. There is a noticeable dip through the central vocal region that robs instruments and voices of density and presence. As a result, guitars lack crunch, pianos lose harmonic richness, and vocals struggle to anchor the mix.
The overall impression is one of distance and diffusion. Instead of sounding centered and tangible, the mids come across as washed out, with reduced impact and body. The tonal imbalance between the elevated bass and pulled back midrange makes the presentation feel hollow rather than cohesive. Even casual listeners are likely to sense that the tuning does not sound quite right, as the core of the music lacks the weight and immediacy that define a natural sounding headphone.
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Treble
The frequency response does recover somewhat as it moves into the upper midrange and lower treble. Female vocals cut through the mix with more clarity than male baritones, benefiting from the added energy in this region. There is a greater sense of articulation here, which helps prevent the presentation from sounding completely veiled.
However, that lift continues into the lower treble where it becomes problematic. A noticeable glare is introduced, adding sharpness that can turn strident at moderate to higher volumes. Over time, this emphasis contributes to listening fatigue rather than engagement.
Brass instruments in particular highlight the issue. On “Careless Whisper” by George Michael, the iconic saxophone line carries more bite than body, making the track sound harsher and more fatiguing than intended. Instead of smooth, sultry texture, the upper register leans toward edge and glare, which further reinforces the uneven tonal balance of the SV021 Pro.
Technicalities & Soundstaging
There is a sense that the underlying hardware in the SV021 Pro is capable of more than what its final tuning allows. The custom 50mm drivers appear technically competent, but the chosen sound signature limits their ability to showcase resolution and balance.
The elevated bass does more than just mask fine detail. It also compresses the perceived space, leading to a narrower soundstage and less precise imaging. Instruments tend to cluster rather than occupy clearly defined positions, which reduces layering and separation. While closed back headphones rarely deliver expansive staging, there is still a baseline expectation for coherence and placement that is not fully met here.
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In direct comparison, models such as the FiiO FT1 and Beyerdynamic DT 700 Pro X present a more balanced frequency response with stronger spatial performance. Both offer better control in the low end and more convincing imaging, allowing them to sound more open and organized despite operating within the same closed back category.
Drivability
With a rated sensitivity of 106dB/mW and an impedance of 45 ohms, the SV021 Pro is very easy to drive. In practice, it reaches high listening levels straight from a standard smartphone headphone jack without strain. There is no requirement for a dedicated amplifier to achieve adequate volume.
Using external sources does bring incremental improvements. Paired with dongle DACs and a desktop chain consisting of the SMSL DO400 and Aune S17 Pro, the presentation gained slight refinement in control and clarity. However, the changes were subtle rather than transformative. Given the headphone’s accessible price point, investing in higher end source equipment does not materially alter its core tuning characteristics. The fundamental tonal imbalance remains, and additional amplification cannot meaningfully correct it.
The SIVGA SV021 Pro are available in Beechwood (left) or Zebrawood (right)
The Bottom Line
The SV021 Pro is a frustrating release because so much of it is done right. The wood earcups look fantastic, the CNC machined metal frame feels durable and confidence inspiring, the cable is better than most at this price, and long term comfort is genuinely impressive. At 289 grams with plush velour pads, it is easy to wear for hours. From a design and build perspective, this is one of the more premium feeling options under $200.
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Unfortunately, none of that offsets the tuning. The elevated and bloated bass, recessed midrange, and glare in the lower treble combine to create an uneven and fatiguing presentation. Detail retrieval is masked, vocals lack natural body, and spatial performance suffers as a result. No amount of better amplification meaningfully corrects the core imbalance. That is the deal breaker.
SIVGA has proven it can voice headphones well in the past, which makes this outcome more disappointing. At $179, there are closed back alternatives that deliver a more cohesive and accurate sound signature. When sound quality is the primary metric, as it should be with any headphone, the SV021 Pro falls short. For that reason, it is difficult to recommend despite its undeniable strengths in design and comfort.
Pros:
Custom 50mm dynamic drivers with multi layer aluminum composite diaphragm and lightweight voice coil design
Genuine beechwood or zebrawood earcups with solid CNC machined metal frame give a premium look and feel for the price
Lightweight 289 g construction with plush velour pads delivers excellent long term comfort
Elevated bass response adds strong impact for electronic, hip hop, and other bass driven genres
Cons:
No swivel in the yokes may affect fit and seal for some head shapes
Uneven tuning with boosted bass, recessed midrange, and pronounced lower treble glare reduces tonal balance and realism
Congested staging and less precise imaging compared to similarly priced closed back competitors
Boston Dynamics’ Spot, a four-legged machine that has been making its way through factories, warehouses, and power plants on its own for years, can now connect to the Orbit platform and the AIVI-Learning tool. This Google Gemini-powered program uses the photos to provide reports on safety, equipment health, and cleanliness. The system has done well with easy tasks, but when scenarios become cluttered, things become a little hazy.
That all changed with Google Gemini Robotics ER 1.6. This new model brings some high-level thinking to the party, allowing Spot to assess its surroundings, plan its next step, and determine whether or not it has completed the task. It captures photographs from numerous viewpoints at simultaneously, even if the illumination changes or anything obscures the view. It can point to anything on the screen and precisely count them, and it can even avoid producing results that do not exist.
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Pressure gauges are an excellent example of how all of this new technology adds up. Spot moves up to a dial, zooms in if necessary, and then reports the exact reading. It can even manage camera angle distortions and check numerous needles at once if there are more than one to deal with. Sight glasses operate similarly, allowing the robot to estimate liquid levels from empty to full in plain old percentage terms, and those digital displays that used to give it a headache due to glare or bad typefaces. They now work much more consistently.
Spot can also address the bigger picture, as it performs 5S compliance audits without issue, detecting misplaced tools or clutter that violates housekeeping guidelines. If it sees a puddle of liquid, it’s now clever enough to recognize it as a hazard rather than a harmless reflection. Conveyor belts, valves, and other equipment are all thoroughly inspected to detect any minor damage or leaks before they cause major problems.
Every inspection includes a step-by-step analysis of how the robot reached its decision, allowing customers to understand exactly what steps the AI performed rather than receiving a black box response. When the stakes are high and someone will be penalized or the business will be shut down due to unanticipated downtime, that transparency truly creates confidence. The good news is that all of these changes take place completely behind the scenes, with Boston Dynamics and Google handling everything in the cloud, so your robot continues to function normally. As Spot conducts regular patrols, new photographs are fed back into the system, and the models gradually gain a sense of the unique layout, lighting, and equipment of that location. [Source]
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cord Cutters News: Sony has notified owners of its recent BRAVIA television models that significant changes to the built-in TV Guide for its OTA TV antenna users and related menu features will take effect starting in late May 2026. The update affects a range of premium sets released between 2023 and 2025, marking another instance of feature adjustments for older smart TV hardware as manufacturers shift focus toward newer product lines. The changes primarily target the program guide functionality for over-the-air antenna TV channels received via the ATSC tuner. After the cutoff date, program information may fail to display on certain channels, limiting the guide’s usefulness for planning viewing schedules. Users will often see listings only for channels they have recently watched, rather than a comprehensive overview of available broadcasts. Additionally, channel logos that previously appeared in the guide will disappear, and any thumbnail images accompanying program descriptions will no longer load or show.
Further modifications will appear in the television’s menu system. For users relying on connected set-top boxes, the dedicated Set Top Box menu option will be removed entirely. In its place, a simpler Control menu will surface, streamlining access but eliminating some specialized navigation previously available. Program thumbnails, which provided visual previews in various menu sections, will also cease to appear across affected interfaces. These adjustments stem from Sony’s ongoing efforts to manage backend services and data feeds that support enhanced guide features on its Google TV-powered BRAVIA lineup. As television ecosystems evolve rapidly with advancements in processing power, artificial intelligence integration, and cloud-based content delivery, companies periodically retire select capabilities on prior-generation hardware to optimize resources. The 2023 through 2025 models, while still offering excellent picture quality through advanced OLED and LCD panels with features like XR processing, now fall into the category of devices receiving scaled-back support. These are the models impacted:
Microsoft recently released a new preview build of Windows 11 for the Windows Insider channels. Users enrolled in the Insider program can now test a somewhat historic change: a new “hard” size limit for disk volumes formatted with the FAT32 file system. This long-anticipated update may improve compatibility and flexibility… Read Entire Article Source link
Japanese entertainment company Toho has released a teaser video for Godzilla Minus Zero, the upcoming sequel to the award-winning film Godzilla Minus One. The teaser shows the famous monster next to the Statue of Liberty as it rampages across New York. Godzilla Minus Zero is set in 1949, two years after the events of the first film, and will be a direct sequel. You’ll see familiar faces from Minus One in the short trailer, as well, namely Koichi Shikishima and Noriko Oishi, two of the first movie’s main characters.
The kaiju flick was filmed specifically for IMAX with high-definition digital cameras. Even its audio was optimized for the massive screen’s immersive cinema experience. Minus One won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, so expectations are high for this sequel. The good news is that this movie is also helmed by Takashi Yamazaki, who wrote, directed and oversaw the visual effects for Minus One. Godzilla Minus Zero is heading to cinemas in Japan on November 3 and in the United States on November 6 this year.
Soccer piracy losses estimated between $700M and $800M annually
Real-time AI detection cuts piracy rates across major matches
Traditional blocking tools struggle against large-scale streaming networks
Piracy of live football streams has grown into an industrial-scale problem, with Spanish clubs warning that illegal viewing is draining hundreds of millions of dollars from the sport each year.
LaLiga estimates piracy costs its clubs, which include Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Atlético Madrid, between $700m and $800m annually, a figure that reflects both lost subscriptions and declining broadcast value.
The league has been working with infrastructure company Fastly on tools which attempt to detect illegal streams as matches unfold rather than after they have already spread.
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The problem of Illegal streaming
Millions of unauthorized streams now operate in parallel during major matches, often appearing faster than traditional enforcement tools can react.
A study by Grant Thornton recorded at least 10.8 million unauthorized retransmissions of live events in 2024, with more than 81% never suspended and only 2.7% removed within the first 30 minutes.
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Illegal streaming is widespread across Europe, with estimates suggesting nearly four million people in the UK use unauthorized sources to watch live sport.
Traditional methods such as IP blocking have long been used to restrict access to illegal streams, but those measures can disrupt legitimate viewers while pirate services quickly reappear under new addresses. That has created a cycle where enforcement lags behind distribution.
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LaLiga and Fastly have been developing systems that rely on AI and content-based signals to identify illegal streams in real time. Instead of blocking large network ranges, the system focuses on detecting specific signals linked to copyrighted broadcasts.
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“At LaLiga, we have succeeded in reducing piracy of our streams in Spain by 60% during the 2024/25 season through a comprehensive, end-to-end strategy focused on legal, educational, institutional, and technological measures,” said Javier Tebas, President at LaLiga.
“This success is due in large part to our ecosystem of partners like Fastly, enabling us to continue exploring new and more effective ways to tackle piracy at its root. LaLiga remains firmly committed to putting an end to piracy, and achieving this goal requires the collaboration of all stakeholders working together.”
The partnership focuses on shrinking the time window in which illegal streams can operate before being flagged and removed.
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Faster detection increases the chance of stopping unauthorized broadcasts before large audiences gather.
“Unlike alternative approaches based on regional blocking, our strategy focuses on precision, letting fans enjoy the game while protecting content from abuse by criminals,” said Kelly Shortridge, Chief Product Officer at Fastly.
“At Fastly, we love co-innovating with customers to solve their thorniest challenges, and we look forward to continuing our work with LaLiga to help protect content owners around the world.”
Efforts to curb piracy are becoming more technical as viewing habits shift online and illegal distribution tools grow more sophisticated. Leagues increasingly view rapid detection and targeted removal as necessary to protect broadcast revenue and limit the spread of unauthorized streams.
California-based auditor webXray reports that tech giants have continued to use cookies to track users across the internet, even when website visitors reject them. Google, Microsoft, and Meta have all disputed the findings. Read Entire Article Source link
The first step was to deal with the really grungy case. The shell was soaked in dish soap and given a good brushing before being packed and sent to a collaborator. Upon inspection of the internals, several unknown modifications to the PCB were evident. These were likely to support playing home-burned copies of pirated games, as well as an NTSC region hack (for this PAL version of the console), courtesy of a dodgy-looking crystal oscillator hanging on the end of some wires.
Luckily, the PS1 product design is highly modular, giving excellent repairability, which made reversing this a doddle. The mod wiring was removed by simply desoldering it, but the cut traces needed to be cleaned up and reconnected to return it to stock condition.
After the first round of fixes, [Elliot] plugged into the TV for a test. It was still outputting black-and-white. Something was still amiss. He had simply connected one of the repair wires to the wrong spot on the PCB. After correcting that error (and getting lucky, no damage was done), the correct colour PAL output was seen.
An unidentified Chinese 1080p HDMI upscaler mod
Next, a PicoStation ZeroWire was soldered in place. This cleverly-shaped PCB hosts one of the Pico MCU chips and allows launching games from an SD card. Using a combination of large through holes on the PCB and a few castellated edge holes, installation looks very easy. ZeroWire is a bit of an unfortunate name, as it actually requires one jumper wire to be attached, but we’re just nitpicking here. Next, there was some really precarious-looking pin lifting on the CDROM controller chip. Cleanliness is in order here for a successful soldering mod. A special ESD toothbrush (not really) was pressed into service for cleaning with IPA. Proper ESD tools are not expensive, but you can get away without them.
An Amazon-sourced PAL-to-HDMI adapter was tried to perform some 720p “upscaling”. This reduced the obvious jaggies a bit, but it was not really good enough for [Elliot]. So instead, he installed an HDMI mod board sourced from an Aliexpress store (listing now defunct). The metal shielding can was removed to reveal the video ICs. The serial port connector was removed, as this is the location for the new HDMI port. The ‘fun’ part of this particular mod is attaching the custom flex PCB to the video chip. This is quite a daunting task for those not comfortable with SMT soldering techniques. It may look hard, but it’s actually dead easy to drag-solder this, so long as you use plenty of good-quality flux and keep the heat under control. Once that was out of the way and second smaller cable was routed to the audio chip.
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The final result internals. Tidy!
Next up was to deal with the old-school wired controllers. The TechnoBit Videojuegos Re-Live BT controller board allows the use of a modern wireless controller. Its installation requires disassembling the original controller connector module. The PCB from the rear of the module is removed along with the ribbon cable connector and a through-hole Zener diode, both of which are reused and soldered to the new controller board. This seems like an unnecessary faff and could have easily been pre-installed or at least included with the PCB. Also, soldering the through-hole beeper to surface-mount pads made us cringe. That looks like someone forgot to make the correct footprint for a part that normal humans can solder.
Finally, a Robot Retro USB-C power supply was dropped in to replace the original AC power supply, bringing this build’s connectivity into the current decade. USB power, HDMI ‘1080p’ output, SD card game loading, and a BT controller. Nice! The last part of the build features a custom respray of the enclosure, a nod to the original ‘dev kit blue’ version when the PS1 was first announced all those years ago. Ah, we remember it well!
Fluidstack, a startup that builds specialized data centers for AI companies, is in talks to raise a $1 billion round at an $18 billion valuation, potentially led by Jane Street, Bloomberg reports.
Should this deal come to fruition, it would more than double Fluidstack’s valuation in a matter of months.
In December, the company was reportedly raising around $700 million at a $7.5 billion valuation, sources told Bloomberg at the time, although it didn’t formally announce the close of that round. That round was said to be led by Situational Awareness, an AGI-focused fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, and backed by Stripe’s Collison brothers, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and the AI investor and entrepreneur Daniel Gross.
Talks were apparently still ongoing for this round in February, at least with Google, which was considering kicking in $100 million to the round, The Wall Street Journal reported.
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There’s good reason for the hype over Fluidstack. In November, Anthropic announced that it had signed a $50 billion deal with the startup to build data centers custom-designed for its needs in Texas and New York. Unlike hyperscalers like AWS, which serve all kinds of computing needs, Fluidstack’s infrastructure is built specifically for AI.
The deal was a huge vote of confidence for Fluidstack, a company that was relatively unknown in the U.S. Anthropic primarily uses AWS and Google Cloud to serve Claude (though it also has a partnership with Microsoft to supply Claude to that software giant’s customers). But just like rival OpenAI, Anthropic is growing so fast that it needs more capacity, and this deal gives Anthropic more control over its own cloud infrastructure.
This partnership is so significant to the startup that Fluidstack — which was spun out of Oxford and had been a rising star in Europe’s AI scene — relocated its headquarters from the U.K. to New York. Last month, it also pulled out of a key €10 billion AI project in France, Bloomberg reported, to focus on U.S. opportunities.
Techcrunch event
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San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026
In addition to Anthropic, it counts Meta, Poolside, Black Forest Labs, and others as customers. Prior to the deal with Anthropic, Fluidstack was probably best known for providing infrastructure to Mistral.
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Fluidstack did not respond to a request for comment.
Have you ever deleted a game you were not finished with simply because your Xbox Series X|S had run out of room, only to face a lengthy re-download the next time you wanted to play?
That frustration is exactly what the WD_BLACK C50 2TB Storage Expansion Card addresses, and it is currently down from £282.99 to £189.99 on Amazon, making this one of the better moments to fix the problem properly.
With a 33% discount back on the table, the WD_BLACK C50 2TB is an easy way to expand your Xbox storage before things get tight
At this price, this WD_Black C50 deal is a straightforward upgrade for anyone who has to make difficult decisions about their games storage.
The key word is properly, because unlike plugging in an external USB drive, the C50 slots directly into the dedicated expansion port on your Xbox Series X and Series S and operates through Xbox Velocity Architecture, which means games stored on it run with the same speed and responsiveness as titles on the console’s internal SSD.
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That matters more than it might sound, because Xbox Series X|S games are designed around that architecture, and running them from a slower external drive forces them off the internal storage entirely, costing you the fast load times and Quick Resume functionality that make the console worth owning in the first place.
Quick Resume itself is worth unpacking here, as it lets you suspend multiple games simultaneously and jump back into any of them almost instantly, but that feature depends entirely on having enough fast storage available to hold those suspended states ready to go.
At 2TB, the WD_BLACK C50 gives you room to keep a substantial library installed and ready without constant management, which changes the relationship you have with your game collection from one of rationing to one of just playing whatever you feel like.
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The card weighs just 25 grams and is officially licensed by Microsoft, so it slots in without any setup process or compatibility concerns, and the five-year limited warranty means it is built to last well beyond the current console generation.
This is a straightforward upgrade for any Xbox Series X|S owner who has started making difficult decisions about which games to keep installed, and at £189.99 the WD_BLACK C50 2TB makes that problem disappear without a complicated solution.
More than 100 malicious extensions in the official Chrome Web Store are attempting to steal Google OAuth2 Bearer tokens, deploy backdoors, and carry out ad fraud.
Researchers at application security company Socket discovered that the malicious extensions are part of a coordinated campaign that uses the same command-and-control (C2) infrastructure.
The threat actor published the extensions under five distinct publisher identities in multiple categories: Telegram sidebar clients, slot machine and Keno games, YouTube and TikTok enhancers, a text translation tool, and utilities.
According to the researchers, the campaign uses a central backend hosted on a Contabo VPS, with multiple subdomains handling session hijacking, identity collection, command execution, and monetization operations.
Socket has found evidence indicating a Russian malware-as-a-service (MaaS) operation, based on comments in the code for authentication and session theft.
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Extensions linked to the same campaign Source: Socket
Harvesting data and hijacking accounts
The largest cluster, comprising 78 extensions, injects attacker-controlled HTML into the user interface via the ‘innerHTML’ property.
The second-largest group, with 54 extensions, uses ‘chrome.identity.getAuthToken’ to collect the victim’s email, name, profile picture, and Google account ID.
They also steal the Google OAuth2 Bearer token, a short-lived access token that permits applications to access a user’s data or to act on their behalf.
Google account data harvesting Source: Socket
A third batch of 45 extensions features a hidden function that runs on browser startup, acting as a backdoor that fetches commands from the C2 and can open arbitrary URLs. This function does not require the user to interact with the extension.
One extension highlighted by Socket as “the most severe” steals Telegram Web sessions every 15 seconds, extracts session data from ‘localStorage’ and the session token for Telegram Web, and sends the info to the C2.
“The extension also handles an inbound message (set_session_changed) that performs the reverse operation: it clears the victim’s localStorage, overwrites it with threat actor-supplied session data, and force-reloads Telegram,” describes Socket.
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“This allows the operator to swap any victim’s browser into a different Telegram account without the victim’s knowledge.”
The researchers also found three extensions that strip security headers and inject ads into YouTube and TikTok, one that proxies translation requests through a malicious server, and a non-active Telegram session theft extension that uses staged infrastructure.
Socket has notified Google about the campaign, but warns that all malicious extensions are still available on the Chrome Web Store at the time of publishing their report.
BleepingComputer confirms that many of the extensions listed in Socket’s report are still available at publishing time. We have reached out to Google for a comment on this, but we have not heard back.
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Users are recommended to search their installed extensions against the IDs Socket published, and uninstall any matches immediately.
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