Google shows off in-house browser beta

Open-source ‘Chrome’ promises security as well as efficiency.

Ever-expanding web giant

Google

has released an early version of its own browser, developed in house but under open-source principles, with a number of built-in security systems and techniques supplementing new ideas for speed and efficiency.

The browser, dubbed ‘

Chrome

‘, will include alerts from

Google

‘s database of known-bad sites, including sites carrying malware, whenever the user attempts to visit them or turns up links to them in search results. To further combat phishing, the address bar highlights the domain portion of the URL, to make it clearer when a spoofed site is visited.

Perhaps most significantly from a security viewpoint, the individual tabs of the browser, each operated as a separate process, will be run in a sandbox designed to minimise access to the machine underneath. Speculation that this kind of integrated sandboxing would emerge in a browser product has been rife since

Google

‘s

acquisition

of browser sandboxing specialist

GreenBorder

, 15 months ago.

The browser is currently available for

Windows

only, with

Mac

and

Linux

versions expected soon. A blog entry announcing the beta issue is

here

, with a comic book detailing the new ideas and development process

here

. It can be downloaded for trial from

here

.

Posted on 03 September 2008 by

Virus Bulletin