Now this is a facepalm moment – Yahoo, so soon after rolling out their new Axis service, has just disabled the Google Chrome extension after a developer pointed out to Yahoo that the extension could be forged. According to a Yahoo spokesperson who confirmed the temporary shutdown, “Yahoo! takes online security seriously. We recently learned of a vulnerability with Yahoo! Axis on Chrome and immediately disabled the Chrome extension. We are actively working towards a resolution and expect to have a fix shortly.”
At least when Yahoo first discovered this issue, they were proactive in pulling down the Chrome extension, while blacklisting the exposed cert key with Google in order to resolve the vulnerability. There will be an updated Chrome extension coming our way soon in order to deal with this particular issue once and for all. Yahoo has apologized as well for the inconvenience caused, and it is not the most smooth sailing of all beginnings, but hopefully this will be the last. It makes sense for Yahoo to address this issue with speed and finesse, too, as Google Chrome is now the most popular Web browser after Internet Explorer.