New security measure aims at applications that alter browser settings

Aug 19, 2014 06:54 GMT  ·  By

Google announced that starting this week, the Safe Browsing protection mechanism available in Chrome would benefit from extended capabilities that allow detection of deceptive software aiming at making unexpected changes to the computer.

Simply put, Google Chrome will be able to warn users of potentially unwanted applications (PUA) by blocking their download.

The programs restricted by the new security gate generally fall into the category of toolbars and plug-ins that pose as helpful items but change the browser homepage or other settings that may affect web navigation habits.

Getting the suspicious files is not restricted altogether, as users have the possibility to finish the operation from the Downloads section of the web browser.

The Safe Browsing service is not present only in Google’s products, and any other software using its API can benefit from its protection.

Mozilla Firefox relies on whitelisting for determining whether a downloaded file is malicious in nature or not, but on Windows, all items outside its lists are checked using Google Safe Browsing, which delivers metadata for establishing its legitimacy.

The security upgrade has been made on Thursday by Moheeb Abu Rajab, staff engineer at Google.

“Starting next week, we’ll be expanding Safe Browsing protection against additional kinds of deceptive software: programs disguised as a helpful download that actually make unexpected changes to your computer—for instance, switching your homepage or other browser settings to ones you don’t want,” he said in a blog post.

At the moment, the service is responsible for blocking more than three million suspicious downloads every week.