A malicious Chrome extension impersonating the Perplexity AI brand captured every keystroke typed in the browser address bar in real time, routing that data to an attacker-controlled server before users ever pressed Enter, according to Microsoft’s Defender Security Research team. This technique goes beyond prior AI-branded extension attacks by intercepting input pre-submission, meaning credentials, search terms, and sensitive queries could be harvested before any network request was initiated by the user. The campaign signals a deliberate escalation in browser-based data collection tradecraft, exploiting consumer trust in AI brand names to bypass user scrutiny of extension permissions.