Google Chrome - Features - Security

Security

See also: Browser security

Chrome periodically retrieves updates of two blacklists (one for phishing and one for malware), and warns users when they attempt to visit a harmful site. This service is also made available for use by others via a free public API called "Google Safe Browsing API".

Chrome uses a complex process-allocation model to allocate different tabs to fit into different processes to prevent what happens in one tab from affecting what happens in others. Following the principle of least privilege, each process is stripped of its rights and can compute, but cannot interact with sensitive areas (e.g. OS memory, user files) — this is similar to the "Protected Mode" used by Internet Explorer 9 and 10. The Sandbox Team is said to have "taken this existing process boundary and made it into a jail." This enforces a computer security model whereby there are two levels of multilevel security (user and sandbox) and the sandbox can only respond to communication requests initiated by the user. On Linux sandboxing uses the seccomp mode.

In December 2011 a report by Accuvant, funded by Google, rated the sandbox security of Google Chrome 12 and 13 as better than either Internet Explorer 9 or Mozilla Firefox 5.

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