[ianzakalwe]

Actually malicious extension only had 250 downloads, 45k installs extension was sending telemetry only. It’s a very misleading title collapsing two separate incidents into one for the sake of dramatization.

This article also highlighted that automated tools used by VS team are pretty good at catching most of similar issues.

[newaccount74]

Tracking your host name is not telemetry, it's definitely spyware.

[cywick]

Exactly. Typically, exfiltrating this kind of information is only the first step. Once enough high value targets are caught in this net, the actual malware is deployed.

[scotty79]

Still, it's not nearly on the same level as exfiltrating secrets.