Google Chrome To Protect Users Against Malicious Executables

It looks like Google Chrome is stepping up to provide users with the
most secure browsing experience.
The browser has been built with
security in mind since the beginning
with it ’ s sandbox model and it escaped exploitation during the
recent Pwn2Own contest. Now they are infringing on the area
of anti-virus vendors and stepping up in the fight against malware by proposing to block applications that
are harmful to Windows users. All we need to do now is make sure
all new computers ship out with
Chrome or Firefox installed as the default browser. Google says it ’ s expanding its blacklist of malicious websites to
include those that use deceptive
claims to push harmful Windows
programs. The addition to Google’ s Safe Browsing API will warn people when
they are about to visit websites that
offer Windows-based trojans that are
disguised as screen savers or other
innocuous applications. The search
behemoth introduced the service five years ago to alert users when they
try to browse sites that perform
drive-by downloads that exploit
security vulnerabilities in the
operating system or browsing
software. The underlying programming
interface is already being used by
browsers including Google Chrome,
Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari. It ’ s also available to any webmaster who
wants to use the wealth of
information available from Google to
prevent malicious links from being
posted to their sites. Seen as though this is part of the
Google Safe Browsing API, I wonder
will Firefox follow suit and implement this in their browser. It ’ s always a good idea to give users an additional
layer of security. The onion approach rather than
security by obscurity – or more commonly, just not giving two shits. Drive by downloads have been a
problem for a long time, and will
continue to be a problem when it
comes to users lacking proper secure
computing habits (e.g. most of the
public mass). “ Safe Browsing has done a lot of good for the web, yet the internet remains
rife with deceptive and harmful
content,” Moheeb Abu Rajab, a member of Google’ s security team, blogged on Tuesday. “ It’ s easy to find sites hosting free downloads that
promise one thing but actually
behave quite differently. ” Keyloggers, botnet software and
adware are just three examples. The new feature will initially be
available only for Chrome users who
subscribe to the browser ’ s development release channel. The
company plans to integrate it into the
next stable release of Chrome. There is
no mention of it being made available
to browser providers outside of
Google. The warning will be displayed
whenever users encounter a
download from a URL that matches
the latest list of malicious websites
published by the Google API. Safe Browsing is good and I think it
really helps, especially with phishing sites which tend to get reported very
quickly and then are promptly
blocked in users browsers. The new feature isn ’ t available in the current stable release of Chrome, but will be merged into the next stable
version and is currently available in
the development release.

You can read more here: www.darknet.org.uk/2011/04/google-chrome-to-protect-users-against-malicious-executables/

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