14 DAY TRIAL // Google has released new dev and canary builds of its Chrome browser, which contain a sandboxed Flash Player version developed in collaboration with Adobe.
In software development, sandboxing refers to the practice of isolating processes and strictly controlling their interaction with the operating system.
This kind of restricted environment makes it very hard for attackers to exploit vulnerabilities in order to execute arbitrary code or perform other malicious actions on the computer.
Chrome has featured a sandbox for its main rendering engines since the very beginning, which is one of the reasons why it is currently the least attacked browser.
“Since this past March, we’ve been working closely with Adobe to allow Flash Player to take advantage of new sandboxing technology in Chrome, extending the work we’ve already done with sandboxing for HTML rendering and JavaScript execution,” Google engineers Justin Schuh and Carlos Pizano, write.
The result of this collaboration is a new Flash Player version running under Chrome’s sandbox, which has the added benefit of also working under Windows XP.
Peleus Uhley, platform security strategist with Adobe's Secure Software Engineering Team (ASSET), explains that Flash Player already integrates with the sandbox-like Protected Mode of Internet Explorer. However, this is only available for Windows Vista and 7.
This release doesn’t mean that work on the Flash Player sandbox is finished. The Chrome developers are planning to add protection against additional attack vectors and to port the technology to Unix and Mac as well.
Also, it’s good to remember that this is still a development preview, so it’s still rough around the edges. For example, some users already reported that the new sandbox breaks the Flash Player settings panel.
People who experience significant problems and want to disable the technology, can run the browser with the --disable-flash-sandbox command line.
Non-adventurous users, who prefer running the stable version of Chrome, will get to enjoy the Flash sandbox and its added security at the middle of January.
Google Chrome for Windows is available for download here.
Google Chrome for Linux is available for download here.
Google Chrome for Mac is available for download here.