Fix Chrome’s Error: ‘This extension may have been corrupted by malware’

Some users who installed extensions such as ABP, uBlock, Google Hangouts, HTTPS Everywhere in Chrome (other than Stable channel) have reported in various forums that their extension was disabled in such a way that it can’t be re-enabled and showing a message on Chrome://extensions page, here it is: ‘ This extension may have been corrupted by malware’ (check the screenshot below), that may be a false positive and not due to malware.

First things first, this is because of the content verification feature, which is behind a flag with a name ‘Extension Content Verification’ and was enabled on the Canary and developer channels, but not on beta or stable channels. This issue has been fixed by Google, refer to this bug for more details.

Related: Fix Chrome’s ‘Attempted to downgrade extension’ Error

NEWS Alert: Just in case, you’re checking this post because installed extensions in Chrome 53 or later showing as corrupted by the browser, then check this.

Fix Chrome 53’s Extension Corrupted Errors and Re-enable the Disabled Extensions

Reasons  for Content verification to show this error

“When we disable an extension from the webstore because it’s content doesn’t match the expected hash, we currently display the error message on chrome://extensions “This extension may have been corrupted by malware”. ” Chromium Project member, Asargent said.

Disk errors such as incomplete file writes during update/install, failing drive or damaged filesystem, etc also contributes to this.

Affected Channels

 It seems Chrome stable and beta channel users are not affected here, but Canary and dev channel users are. If you still see this error for an extension on Chrome://extensions page, then, the below steps may help you.

Fix “Google Has Flagged “IDM Integration” as malicious and installation has been Prevented”

Fixing Chrome’s ‘This extension may have been corrupted by malware’ Message

1  Uninstalling and reinstalling the affected extension has fixed the problem for some. It can be a case where you’re using an old version of the extension, but the developer of it has already updated the extension in the Web Store with a fix to this issue.

2. Reset Chrome flags to default, restart the browser. If you’ve played with chrome://flags/#extension-content-verification flag settings by setting as ‘Enforce Strict’, changing it to ‘Bootstrap’ worked for some. Go and reset all flags to default, it doesn’t harm you.

Are you seeing this error for any installed extension in Chrome? Let me know in the comments.