Mountain View, California — In an attempt to further enhance the security and speed of its latest beta version of popular Chrome browser, Google over the weekend patched Chrome 16 with a security update that quashed three bugs, all rated “high,” the company’s second-most-dire threat rating, which now includes a new feature that warns users when they are about to download a malicious file or one from a site known to distribute malware.
That is not an innovative new feature, of course, as previous versions of the browser would also let users know when they were about to visit a malicious web site, besides some other browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer, have a similar feature, which is also found in anti-virus software from major vendors already protect consumers in this way.
Google made the announcement on their Chrome blog, describing that earlier versions of their browser only warned of drive-by malware attacks.
“We are starting small with this initial beta release, but we will be increasing the coverage for more and more malicious files in the coming months,” Dominic Hamon, a Google software engineer, said on the company’s blog.
Two of the deadliest bugs covered rewards of $1,000 each, including one to a developer who works for rival Mozilla, maker of Firefox. Google, like Mozilla, pays outside investigators for bugs they report: Last year, Google wrote checks totaling $180,000 to bug hunters. Although, this latest update would analyze executable files, such as .exe or .msi, and recommend discarding them, if they are found to be malicious.
“If a file you download is recognized to be bad, or is hosted on a website that hosts a relatively high percentage of malicious downloads, Chrome will warn you that the file appears to be malicious and that you should discard it,” wrote Hamon.
The browser would provide the same advice for files a user is trying to download from a site with a reputation for drive-by malware. Not to mention some off-the-shelf anti-virus solutions which also offer this kind of protection.
With the latest release of Chrome 16 Web browser to the stable channel, Google Jan. 5 made Chrome 17 available to the beta channel with a focus on speed and security. Chrome now employs Google’s Safe Browsing technology to identify inherently malicious websites, and files downloaded from them.
According to Google engineer Hamon, Chrome 17 amplifies on the anti-malware download alerts that were first incorporated in to Chrome’s code in April 2011 and appeared in the stable channel of the browser in June 2011’s Chrome 12.
Moving forward, Chrome will begin loading some Web pages in the background before users finish typing the URL. When a URL auto-completes for a Website the searcher is likely to visit, Chrome commences to prerender the page, anticipating that a user might be interested in returning to the page.
“Prerendering minimizes the time between when you hit Enter and when you see your fully-loaded Web page–in some cases, the Web page instantly become visible,” explained Chrome engineer Hamon in a blog post.
Chrome 17’s beta can be downloaded from Google’s website.