Fake versions of the popular Bad Piggies game by Angry Birds developer Rovio have infected more than 80,000 computers with unwanted adverts through the Chrome browser.

Bad Piggies
Ad Piggies - fake version of the game installs advert malware

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Spotted by internet security company Barracuda, the rogue games appears in the search results for 'Bad Piggies' in the Google Chrome web store and installs a fake version of the game, completely different to the one sold by Rovio for iOS and Android.

Barracuda said: "Seven of these plugins are from the same source www.playook.info, a maker of 'free' flash games. A quick glance at the Whois records for playook.info tells us... nothing.

"They hide their name behind Whoisguard, a very suspicious thing for a business to do. What's more, installing these 7 plugins request a significant permissions: "access your data on all websites"

At this stage we would suggest the user stops installing the game, but if you were to continue the game installs a plug-in to your browser that displays additional advertisements on some popular websites, such as Yahoo, Myspace eBay and MSN.

Barracuda estimates that, as of 2 October, there are more than 82,000 Chrome users who installed these malicious versions of Bad Piggies; the security site added that "the total number is still climbing fast day by day, eg about 13,000 new installations [were added] from October 1 to October 2...

"Users who give up such extensive permission run the risk of getting their browsers hijacked. The plugin authors can acquire all the web data when users browse the Internet with Chrome and then misuse users information, such as stealing and selling user email addresses and online credit card information."

Barracuda suggests that Chrome users check the requested permissions of applications and plug-ins they want to install to their browser with a keen eye and they should not install anything that requests unreasonable permission to your data.

"If you have already installed, uninstall them immediately and change your passwords on other websites if possible.

"As Chrome gains more browser market share, Google should provide better secure solutions on Chrome web store to protect its users. Until then, it's especially important that Chrome users know how to protect themselves."

We reviewed Bad Piggies for iPhone last week and scored it an impressive 9/10.