Year: 2026
Stack: JavaScript (Extension API), Manifest V3
Platform: Chrome Web Store
The Problem: The Impunity of Fast Phishing
Smishing and phishing in Chile have reached alarming levels. Scammers register dozens of domains daily, simulating unpaid highway toll (TAG) bills, CorreosChile package delivery issues, or bank account suspensions.
Traditional security tools take hours or even days to classify these short-lived local domains, leaving a vulnerability window where hundreds of people fall victim to the scam. In my experience, reporting these sites directly to infrastructure providers like Cloudflare or the hosting companies that support them is usually useless in the short term: the process can take hours or even days, and in many cases, companies simply do nothing due to business convenience or bureaucracy, leaving the scam active and claiming new victims.
The Solution: Huaso Shield
As a response to this institutional inaction and slowness, I developed Huaso Shield (under the brand of my company, Kometa Networks). It is not just another security tool; it is a preventive shield designed to act immediately and locally in the user’s browser, blocking scams before they can even render on the screen.
Key Features
- Instant Local Blocking: Immediately halts navigation towards fake toll payment portals, CorreosChile clones, and bank phishing screens specific to Chile.
- Smart Synchronization: The extension’s Service Worker runs in the background every 60 minutes via native browser alarms to update the database of local threats, without slowing down your connection.
- Privacy by Design (Zero-Tracking): The extension does not analyze or save your browsing history in the cloud. All filtering logic happens on the client side.
- Active Reporting: A direct feedback loop in the user interface allows anyone to report a suspicious link, protecting the rest of the community during the next sync cycle.
Architecture & Technical Approach
For this project, blocking speed and privacy were essential requirements.
I decided to build the extension using Manifest V3, Chrome’s latest security standard. To avoid querying external servers on every open tab —which would compromise user privacy— I implemented a native filtering engine backed by the declarativeNetRequest API.
The backend of Huaso Shield acts as a threat consolidator. It processes community reports and automates the update of blocking rules by cross-referencing submissions with official alerts such as those from the Government’s CSIRT, allowing browsers with the extension installed to transparently update their defenses in less than an hour.