News Brief: Inside the Honey Browser Extension Scandal with The Engineer Who Broke It Open

In this episode of Secure Disclosure, we go behind the scenes of the infamous Honey browser extension scandal with special guest J3lte, the engineer who uncovered the data that helped expose what was really happening.

From affiliate link manipulation to massive user tracking across thousands of stores, J3lte breaks down how he reverse-engineered Honey, what he discovered, and why browser extensions can be far more dangerous than most people realize.

Stay tuned for the untold technical story behind one of the biggest consumer security scandals online.

Follow J3lte - https://x.com/j3lte

Original Videos from MegaLag

1st Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4yL3YTwWk

2nd Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwB3FmbcC88

3rd Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGT_CKGgFE

Other videos covering the scandal (that are awesome)

The PrimeTime - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_acTMUmdY9M

Marques Brownlee - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAx_RtMKPm8

News Links

ClawdBot VS Extensions Malware https://www.aikido.dev/blog/fake-clawdbot-vscode-extension-malware

Contagious Interview Link: https://opensourcemalware.com/blog/contagious-code-fake-font

Chapters

00:00 – The Honey Scandal Returns

02:11 – Users, Merchants, and Hidden Coupon Abuse

03:36 – Meet J3lte: The Engineer Behind the Investigation

05:07 – Discovering 180,000 Stores in Honey’s Data

07:11 – Affiliate Links Without Coupons: No Value Provided

09:49 – Why Browser Extensions Are So Hard to Trust

13:54 – Malware Trend: The Fake Claudebot VS Code Extension

15:57 - Contagious Interview Coverage

18:38 - SoundCloud Hack