What our analysis found

React Developer Tools, used by 6,000,000 people, showed no malicious code in Extension Auditor's review. Its permissions mean it can read and change data on all websites and can inject scripts into pages. It comes from a trusted publisher and was last updated in September 2026.

The extension is the official React Developer Tools by Meta (Facebook), a trusted publisher. The source code matches the expected functionality: it injects a debugging hook into pages, communicates between the devtools panel and content scripts via postMessage and chrome.runtime APIs, and uses permissions (scripting, tabs, storage, <all_urls>) solely for inspecting React component hierarchies. No external data exfiltration, credential theft, or unauthorized collection is present. The ML model’s high-risk indicators (e.g., innerHTML, eval, fromCharCode) are artifacts of Webpack bundling and minification; the permhash cluster’s 6% malware rate is low and not indicative. The third-party risk likelihood is 0, and the publisher is featured with a valid privacy policy. The optional clipboardWrite permission is used only for copying element paths, as disclosed. Therefore, the ML flag is a false positive.