What if the tools you trust most at work — the ones that help you sell, email, or manage your pipeline — were quietly holding the keys to your online identity?
It sounds extreme. But when I scanned one of the most popular sales productivity extensions on Chrome, I found something that should make every company pause.
See here: https://www.dark-layer.com/analysis/chrome/khnbclggeggefodgimdekejhipkeobnc
The Convenience We Don't Question
Tens of thousands of sales teams rely on browser extensions every day. They streamline outreach, track leads, and even make calls right from Gmail or LinkedIn.
They're verified. Trusted. Reviewed by peers.
But that trust has a cost. Because the same integrations that make them powerful — the ability to read tabs, inject scripts, and sync accounts — also give them access to the most private layer of your digital life: your session identity.
EDR solutions guard the front door. Extensions, on the other hand, sneak in wearing a company badge.
The Blind Spot in Enterprise Security
Traditional endpoint security tools are designed to monitor files, executables, and runtime behavior.
Extensions don't behave like that. They live inside browsers, inherit your permissions, and communicate with external domains freely.
For an organization, that creates a blind spot — a layer of active code that's invisible to most security telemetry.
And because these extensions are installed from official marketplaces, they slip through every "approved" list unchallenged.
Inside the Scan
The extension I analyzed — a popular sales automation tool used by over 60,000 professionals — integrates directly into LinkedIn, Gmail, HubSpot, and Salesforce.
Here's what the scan revealed 👇
https://www.dark-layer.com/analysis/chrome/khnbclggeggefodgimdekejhipkeobnc
🍪 Session Cookies Exposed
The extension transmits your LinkedIn session cookie (li_at) to its external servers (lemlist.com).
That cookie represents your logged-in identity.
If it's sent externally, you've effectively handed over your session to another system — which could, technically, impersonate you.
Did you ever explicitly give that consent?
🌐 Broad Domain Access
The manifest requests host permissions across:
linkedin.com, mail.google.com, salesforce.com, hubspot.com, and even localhost.
That's near-total visibility into your work environment.
Technically, it means the extension could interact with anything in those contexts.
🧠 Injected Scripts in Gmail Background scripts inject content directly into Gmail to personalize messages. That's how the tool reads your message context — a powerful productivity feature, but also a potential data exposure vector if anything goes wrong.
Each of these capabilities serves a purpose — but combined, they form an identity surface that's largely invisible to enterprise security systems.
Why It Matters
For individuals, it's a privacy concern. For companies, it's an attack surface.
Think about what a modern sales rep's browser holds:
- CRM tokens
- Email access
- Customer contact data
- Authentication cookies to internal dashboards
If one extension mishandles or leaks that data, a single employee's browser could become the attacker's pivot point into your company.
No phishing, no malware — just a trusted Chrome extension doing its job.
No alerts. No logs. Just silent privilege escalation through an approved plugin.
The Broader Lesson
Browser and IDE extensions aren't fringe risks anymore. They've become part of the enterprise software stack — yet remain almost entirely unmonitored.
This is the new supply chain problem: Code that doesn't live on your systems, but operates inside your sessions.
That's why organizations need a new kind of visibility — one that looks above the endpoint layer, not just at it.
What Security Teams Can Do
Here's where to start 👇
- Inventory extensions and plugins — Know what's installed across browsers and IDEs.
- Review permissions like IAM policies — If an extension asks for access to cookies or tabs, treat that like API-level access.
- Monitor for updates — Extensions can silently expand permissions through auto-updates.
- Inspect outbound connections — Especially calls to unknown or third-party domains.
- Push vendors — Ask your EDR and SIEM partners whether they monitor this layer at all.
Toward Safer Productivity
The goal isn't to ban extensions. They're critical for modern work and productivity.
The goal is governance — enabling safe adoption, not restriction.
That's what tools like mine are built for: AI-driven scanners that uncover what EDRs can't, mapping every extension, plugin, and AI connector across your organization.
By combining analysis with governance, you can embrace these tools — without giving up control.
The Path Forward
If you're a CISO or security engineer, now's the time to extend your visibility upward. From endpoints to browsers. From processes to identities.
And if you're building security tools, let's collaborate. EDR + this new layer = true visibility synergy.
Because the next breach may not come from the code your team writes — but from the extension they installed yesterday.
(Based on automated DarkLayer scan — no evidence of misuse.)
For enterprises: dark-layer.com — get visibility before the next incident. For vendors: Let's close this blind spot together.