Chrome 17 tweaks speed, download security

[nsane.forums]

Safer downloads and a cautious expansion of site pre-caching land in Chrome 17 today, continuing Google's two-tiered approach to browser speed and user safety.

Chrome 17 expands malware detection to some downloads.

Google Chrome 17 stable for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome Frame includes a number of new extension APIs and security fixes.

As revealed in the Chrome 17 beta version, Chrome's safe browsing technology will now scan downloads as well as Web sites. It looks for known malware files, and it analyzes installation files starting with Windows-based EXE and MSI. Google hasn't clarified if the scan will later include other Windows-based file types or installers from Mac and Linux operating systems. If a file is suspected of being malicious, meaning that it doesn't match a whitelist, Chrome will check it against Google's search index to see if the site you're downloading it from hosts a high number of known malicious downloads. If it determines the download to be unsafe, Chrome will barf up a red warning page.

The feature is important for blocking the threat of ransomware "fake antivirus" programs, among other things.

Speed has always been a focus of Chrome's developers, and in version 17 the browser extends the site pre-caching feature to the location bar Omnibox. If you have pre-caching activated in Settings, it will pre-load the first site that autocompletes its URL to a site you're likely to visit. If you choose that site, it will appear to load instantaneously.

Google did not specify what the new extension APIs were, although I recall at least one being related to privacy controls in extensions. Its SVN browser revision log was not working at the time of writing. There were, however, numerous security fixes revealed for Chrome 17. These included one marked Critical, which fixed a race condition after the crash of a utility process; and eight marked High, which fixed problems including use-after-free problems and buffer overflow issues. Click through to read the changelog for Chrome 17 stable.

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[DKT27]

Chrome 17 released, will preload autocompleted URLs as you type

Google has just released Chrome version 17, which brings several minor enhancements to the company's web browser—including a new Web address preloading feature and improved protection against malicious downloads.

The new Chrome introduces a "preemptive rendering" feature that will automatically begin loading and rendering a page in the background while the user is typing the address in the omnibox (the combined address and search text entry field in Chrome's navigation toolbar). The preloading will occur in cases when the top match generated by the omnibox's autocompletion functionality is a site that the user visits frequently.

When the user hits the enter key and confirms the autocompletion result, the pre-rendered page will display almost instantly. The feature extends Chrome's existing predictive page loading functionality to autocompletion results. Unlike Chrome's instant search capability, however, the autocompletion preloading waits until the user hits the enter key before displaying the rendered page.

Google has also added some new security functionality to Chrome. Every time that the user downloads a file, the browser will compare it against a whiltelist of known-good files and publishers. If the file isn't in the whitelist, its URL will be transmitted to Google's servers, which will perform an automatic analysis and attempt to guess if the file is malicious based on various factors like the trustworthiness of its source. If the file is deemed a potential risk, the user will receive a warning.

Google says that data collected by the browser for the malware detection feature is only used to flag malicious files and isn't used for any other purpose. The company will retain the IP address of the user and other metadata for a period of two weeks, at which point all of the data except the URL of the file will be purged from Google's databases.

Users who are concerned about the privacy implications of this functionality can prevent the browser from relaying this information to Google by disabling the phishing and malware protection features in the browser's preferences. You can refer to the official Chromium blog for additional details about the malware detection feature.

Chrome 17 is available through the browser's automatic updater and can also be downloaded from Google's website. More information about the new release is available in the official Google Chrome blog.

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