While the percentage of nasty add-ons was a mere 1.7%, the researchers thought they had something here. Out of the 8485 actively developed addons that they scrapped, 13 were confirmed to be malicious and another 131 were potentially risky.

The researchers started by studying the Kodi addons that are available online by using a software crawler called “ De-Kodi”. SafeKodi is publicly available for free so that everyone can use it to protect themselves. Now, researchers at Northwestern University partnered with engineers from the Brave Software to develop a new Kodi addon called “SafeKodi”, which will help the users identify malicious add-ons and remove them. We have tapped this issue numerous times before, and we have given you direction on where to source safe and working Kodi addons from. Malicious actors are trying to scam and exploit whatever and whomever they can, and the Kodi ecosystem cannot be left out of this targeting.

However, not all of them are genuine, and not all are honest about their intentions. Kodi Addons are meant to help the users extend the functionality of their favorite media player app, fetch specific categories of content, or even metadata like album covers and subtitles.