Security & Privacy

Google has issued an update to the Chrome web browser, releasing version 17 (17.0.963.46 to be precise). This update fixes 20 flaws, one of which was critical, and another half-dozen high risk vulnerabilities.

In addition to patching these flaws, the new version of Chrome includes a new security feature to check for malicious downloads. As the Google Chrome Blog says:

In addition to checking a list of known bad files, Chrome also does checks on executable files (like “.exe” and “.msi” files). If the executable doesn’t match a whitelist, Chrome checks with Google for more information, such as whether the website you’re accessing hosts a high number of malicious downloads.

This looks as though it’s mostly looking for Windows malware, but we’ll try to see how it reacts to malicious files that affect Macs.

Google has also announced that future versions of Chrome will no longer check online for revoked security certificates. There are a number of issues around these security checks (see this Macworld article for details), which can slow down browsing.

Google has not said when this change will be implemented in Chrome.