Security News

Google Chrome now comes with up to 50 times faster phishing detection starting with the latest released version 92, promoted to the stable channel on Tuesday. The phishing site detection speed-up stems from improvements to the Chrome image processing tech used to compare the color profiles of visited websites with collections of signals associated with phishing landing pages.

"Beginning in M94, Chrome will offer HTTPS-First Mode, which will attempt to upgrade all page loads to HTTPS and display a full-page warning before loading sites that don't support it." Google said. "Users who enable this mode gain confidence that Chrome is connecting them to sites over HTTPS whenever possible, and that they will see a warning before connecting to sites over HTTP.".

Google is working on adding an HTTPS-Only Mode to the Chrome web browser to protect users' web traffic from eavesdropping by upgrading all connections to HTTPS. This new feature is now being tested in the Chrome 93 Canary preview releases for Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, and Android. Google has previously updated Chrome to default to HTTPS for all URLs typed in the address bar if the user specifies no protocol.

Google Chrome for iOS now allows you to lock your incognito tabs behind Face ID so other people can't snoop on what sites you are visiting. Google Chrome's incognito mode is commonly used to visit sensitive sites that people do not want to appear in the browser history or for cookies to be saved.

Google on Thursday said it's rolling out new security features to Chrome browser aimed at detecting suspicious downloads and extensions via its Enhanced Safe Browsing feature, which it launched a year ago. Currently, 75% of all add-ons on the platform are compliant, the company pointed out, adding "Any extensions built by a developer who follows the Chrome Web Store Developer Program Policies, will be considered trusted by Enhanced Safe Browsing."

Google has added new protection capabilities for Enhanced Safe Browsing users in Chrome, warning them when installing untrusted extensions and allowing them to request more in-depth scans of downloaded files. The Safe Browsing feature, available in Google Chrome since 2007, warns you of dangerous events when visiting malicious websites by checking URLs against a list of unsafe sites stored within Chrome.

Google says the latest Google Chrome release comes with a significant performance boost due to newly added improvements to the open-source V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine. Google Chrome 91, which started rolling out earlier this week, is executing JavaScript code 23% faster with the inclusion of a new JavaScript compiler and the use of a new way to optimize the code's location in memory.

Google has added a new batch of Chrome Actions for early testing in the latest Google Chrome web browser releases before the feature's worldwide rollout later this year. Chrome Actions is a recently introduced experimental Chrome feature that allows you to type in a command, causing an action to be displayed inline in the browser's address bar search results.

Google has released Chrome 91 today, May 25th, 2021, to the Stable desktop channel, and it includes security improvements, the ability to copy and paste files into web pages, and new developer features. Chrome 91 fixes 32 security vulnerabilities, with eight being marked as 'High' severity.

Google has released a minor Google Chrome update that fixes the worldwide browser crashes occurring since Thursday on Windows 10 and Linux. On Thursday, many Windows 10 users suddenly found that Google Chrome extensions and tabs were crashing, as shown in the image below.