Google Chrome | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Microsoft today finally released the first new reborn version of its Edge browser that the company rebuilds from scratch using Chromium engine, the same open-source web rendering engine that powers Google's Chrome browser. However, the Chromium-based Edge browser builds haven't yet entered the stable or even the beta release; instead, Microsoft has released two testing-purpose preview builds for developers. Both previews build— "Canary"  that will be updated daily, and "Developer"  that will be updated every week—are now available for download from the Microsoft's new Edge insider website . Here's how Microsoft differentiates Canary and Developer builds: "Every night, we produce a build of Microsoft Edge — if it passes automated testing, we'll release it to the Canary channel. We use this same channel internally to validate bug fixes and test brand new features. The Canary channel is truly the bleeding edge, so you may discover bugs

Google announced some major changes for its Android mobile operating system in October after the European Commission hit the company with a record $5 billion antitrust fine for pre-installing its own apps and services on third-party Android phones. The European Commission accused Google of forcing Android phone manufacturers to "illegally" tie its proprietary apps and services—specifically, Chrome and Google Search as the default browsers—to Android, unfairly blocking competitors from reaching consumers. This rule led Google to change the way it licenses the Google mobile application suite to Android smartphone makers. Now, Google is further making some changes related to browser and search engine choice. In a blog post published Tuesday, Google announced that the company would prompt Android phone owners in Europe (new and existing ones) in the coming months to choose from a variety of web browsers and search engines for their devices as their default apps. &

To minimize the risk of privilege misuse, a trend in the privileged access management (PAM) solution market involves implementing just-in-time (JIT) privileged access. This approach to  privileged identity management  aims to mitigate the risks associated with prolonged high-level access by granting privileges temporarily and only when necessary, rather than providing users with continuous high-level privileges. By adopting this strategy, organizations can enhance security, minimize the window of opportunity for potential attackers and ensure that users access privileged resources only when necessary.  What is JIT and why is it important?   JIT privileged access provisioning  involves granting privileged access to users on a temporary basis, aligning with the concept of least privilege. This principle provides users with only the minimum level of access required to perform their tasks, and only for the amount of time required to do so. One of the key advantages of JIT provisioning

You must update your Google Chrome immediately to the latest version of the web browsing application. Security researcher Clement Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group discovered and reported a high severity vulnerability in Chrome late last month that could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code and take full control of the computers. The vulnerability, assigned as CVE-2019-5786 , affects the web browsing software for all major operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, and Linux. Without revealing technical details of the vulnerability, the Chrome security team only says the issue is a use-after-free vulnerability in the FileReader component of the Chrome browser, which leads to remote code execution attacks. What's more worrisome? Google warned that this zero-day RCE vulnerability is actively being exploited in the wild by attackers to target Chrome users. "Access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majo

A group of hackers has hijacked tens of thousands of Google's Chromecast streaming dongles, Google Home smart speakers and smart TVs with built-in Chromecast technology in recent weeks by exploiting a bug that's allegedly been ignored by Google for almost five years. The attackers, who go by Twitter handles @HackerGiraffe and @j3ws3r, managed to hijack Chromecasts' feeds and display a pop-up, spreading a security warning as well as controversial YouTube star PewDiePie propaganda. The hackers are the same ones who hijacked more than 50,000 internet-connected printers worldwide late last year by exploiting vulnerable printers to print out flyers asking everyone to subscribe to PewDiePie YouTube channel. This time, the hackers remotely scanned the internet for compatible devices, including Chromecasts, exposed to the internet through poorly configured routers that have Universal Plug and Play [UPnP] enabled by default. The hackers then exploited a design flaw in Chrome

Google has finally patched a privacy vulnerability in its Chrome web browser for Android that exposes users' device model and firmware version, eventually enabling remote attackers to identify unpatched devices and exploit known vulnerabilities. The vulnerability, which has not yet given any CVE number, is an information disclosure bug that resides in the way the Google Chrome for Android generates 'User Agent' string containing the Android version number and build tag information, which includes device name and its firmware build. This information is also sent to applications using WebView and Chrome Tabs APIs, which can be used to track users and fingerprint devices on which they are running. For example: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 5.1.1; Nexus 6 Build/LYZ28K ) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/46.0.2490.34 Mobile Safari/537.36 Yakov Shafranovich, a contributor at Nightwatch Cybersecurity firm, initially reported this issue to Google three years a

It is no secret how miserably Microsoft's 3-year-old Edge web browser has failed to compete against Google Chrome despite substantial investment and continuous improvements. According to the latest round of tech rumors, Microsoft has given up on Edge and reportedly building a new Chromium -based web browser, dubbed project codename " Anaheim " internally, that will replace Edge on Windows 10 operating system as its new default browser, a journalist at WindowsCentral learned. Though there is no mention of Project Anaheim on the Microsoft website as of now (except Anaheim Convention Center at California), many speculate that the new built-in browser could appear in the 19H1 development cycle of Microsoft's Insider Preview program. According to the report, the new browser will be powered by Blink rendering engine used by Chromium, one that also powers Google's Chrome browser, instead of Microsoft's own EdgeHTML engine. Chromium is an open-source Web b

Would you prefer purchasing an Android device that doesn't have any apps or services from Google? No Google Maps, No Gmail, No YouTube! And NOT even the Google Play Store—from where you could have installed any Android apps you want Because if you live in Europe, from now on, you have to spend some extra cash on a smartphone with built-in Google services, which were otherwise until now freely available and already included in the cost of your smartphone. For the very first time, Google has announced its plans to charge a fee to European Android phone manufacturers who want to include a free version of Google apps on their Android handsets. In short, Android phone makers will now have to pay Google for installing the Play store, Gmail, YouTube, Maps, and Chrome, that are usually considered to be core parts of the Android operating system, but are actually Google services. "Since the pre-installation of Google Search and Chrome together with our other apps helped us

All major web browsers, including Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox, altogether today announced to soon remove support for TLS 1.0 (20-year-old) and TLS 1.1 (12-year-old) communication encryption protocols. Developed initially as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, Transport Layer Security (TLS) is an updated cryptographic protocol used to establish a secure and encrypted communications channel between clients and servers. There are currently four versions of the TLS protocol—TLS 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 ( latest )—but older versions, TLS 1.0 and 1.1, are known to be vulnerable to a number of critical attacks, such as  POODLE  and  BEAST . Since TLS implementation in all major web browsers and applications supports downgrade negotiation process, it leaves an opportunity for attackers to exploit weaker protocols even if a server supports the latest version. All Major Web Browsers Will Remove TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 Support in 2020

Google has made several new announcements for its Chrome Web Store that aims at making Chrome extensions more secure and transparent to its users. Over a couple of years, we have seen a significant rise in malicious extensions that appear to offer useful functionalities, while running hidden malicious scripts in the background without the user's knowledge. However, the best part is that Google is aware of the issues and has proactively been working to change the way its Chrome web browser handles extensions. Earlier this year, Google banned extensions using cryptocurrency mining scripts and then in June, the company also disabled inline installation of Chrome extensions completely. The company has also been using machine learning technologies to detect and block malicious extensions. To take a step further, Google announced Monday five major changes that give users more control over certain permissions, enforces security measures, as well as makes the ecosystem more t

With the release of Chrome 68, Google prominently marks all non-HTTPS websites as 'Not Secure' on its browser to make the web a more secure place for Internet users. If you haven't yet, there is another significant reason to immediately switch to the latest version of the Chrome web browser. Ron Masas, a security researcher from Imperva, has discovered a vulnerability in web browsers that could allow attackers to find everything other web platforms, like Facebook and Google, knows about you—and all they need is just trick you into visiting a website. The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2018-6177 , takes advantage of a weakness in audio/video HTML tags and affects all web browsers powered by "Blink Engine," including Google Chrome. To illustrate the attack scenario, the researcher took an example of Facebook, a popular social media platform that collects in-depth profiling information on its users, including their age, gender, where you have been (loca

Starting today with the release of Chrome 68, Google Chrome prominently marks all non-HTTPS websites as 'Not Secure' in its years-long effort to make the web a more secure place for Internet users. So if you are still running an insecure HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) website, many of your visitors might already be greeted with a 'Not Secure' message on their Google Chrome browser warning them that they can't trust your website to be secure. By displaying ' Not Secure ,' Google Chrome means that your connection is not secure because there is no SSL Certificate to encrypt your connection between your computer and the website's server. So, anything sent over a non-HTTPS connection is in plain text, like your password or payment card information, allowing attackers to snoop or tamper with your data. The non-https connection has been considered dangerous particularly for web pages that transfer sensitive information—like login pages and payment

Google has been hit by a record-breaking $5 billion antitrust fine by the European Union regulators for abusing the dominance of its Android mobile operating system and thwarting competitors. That's the largest ever antitrust penalty. Though Android is an open-source and free operating system, device manufacturers still have to obtain a license, with certain conditions, from Google to integrate its Play Store service within their smartphones. The European Commission levied the fine Wednesday, saying that Google has broken the law by forcing Android smartphone manufacturers to pre-install its own mobile apps and services, like Google Search, Chrome, YouTube, and Gmail, as a condition for licensing. This tactic eventually gives Google's app and services an unfair preference over other rival services, preventing rivals from innovating and competing, which is "illegal under EU antitrust rules." Google's Android operating system runs on more than 80 percen

Google has by default enabled a security feature called "Site Isolation" in its web browser with the release of Chrome 67 for all desktop users to help them protect against many online threats, including Spectre and Meltdown attack . Site Isolation is a feature of the Google Chrome web browser that adds an additional security boundary between websites by ensuring that different sites are always put into separate processes, isolated from each other. Since each site in the browser gets its own sandboxed process, the feature makes it harder for untrusted websites to access or steal information of your accounts on other websites. In January this year when Google Project Zero researchers disclosed details of Spectre and Meltdown CPU vulnerabilities, the tech giant recommended Chrome desktop users to manually turn on Site Isolation feature on their devices to mitigate speculative side-channel attacks. "Even if a Spectre attack were to occur in a malicious web page,

You must update your Google Chrome now. Security researcher Michał Bentkowski discovered and reported a high severity vulnerability in Google Chrome in late May, affecting the web browsing software for all major operating systems including Windows, Mac, and Linux. Without revealing any technical detail about the vulnerability, the Chrome security team described the issue as incorrect handling of CSP header ( CVE-2018-6148 ) in a blog post published today. "Access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix. We will also retain restrictions if the bug exists in a third party library that other projects similarly depend on, but haven't yet fixed," the Chrome security team notes. Content Security Policy (CSP) header allows website administrators to add an extra layer of security on a given web page by allowing them to control resources the browser is allowed to load. Mishandling of CSP headers by your web brow

If you have installed any of the below-mentioned Ad blocker extension in your Chrome browser, you could have been hacked. A security researcher has spotted five malicious ad blockers extension in the Google Chrome Store that had already been installed by at least 20 million users. Unfortunately, malicious browser extensions are nothing new. They often have access to everything you do online and could allow its creators to steal any information victims enter into any website they visit, including passwords, web browsing history and credit card details. Discovered by Andrey Meshkov, co-founder of Adguard, these five malicious extensions are copycat versions of some legitimate, well-known Ad Blockers. Creators of these extensions also used popular keywords in their names and descriptions to rank top in the search results, increasing the possibility of getting more users to download them. "All the extensions I've highlighted are simple rip-offs with a few lines of co

In an effort to prevent cryptojacking by extensions that maliciously mine digital currencies without users' awareness, Google has implemented a new Web Store policy that bans any Chrome extension submitted to the Web Store that mines cryptocurrency. Over the past few months, we have seen a sudden rise in malicious extensions that appear to offer useful functionality, while embedding hidden cryptocurrency mining scripts that run in the background without the user's knowledge. Last month, cryptocurrency miners were even found in a Russian nuclear weapons lab and on thousands of government websites . In January, cryptocurrency mining malware also infected more than half-million PCs . Until now, only those cryptocurrency mining extensions were allowed on the Chrome Web Store that are solely intended for mining, and explicitly informed users about its working and revenue model. If the company finds any mining extension developers submitted was not in compliance and secre

Recently uncovered two huge processor vulnerabilities called Meltdown and Spectre have taken the whole world by storm, while vendors are rushing out to patch the vulnerabilities in its products. The issues apply to all modern processors and affect nearly all operating systems (Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, macOS, FreeBSD, and more), smartphones and other computing devices made in the past 20 years. What are Spectre and Meltdown? We have explained both , Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754) and Spectre (CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5715), exploitation techniques in our previous article. In short, Spectre and Meltdown are the names of security vulnerabilities found in many processors from Intel, ARM and AMD that could allow attackers to steal your passwords, encryption keys and other private information. Both attacks abuse 'speculative execution' to access privileged memory—including those allocated for the kernel—from a low privileged user process like a malicious app running on a

To improve performance and reduce crashes caused by third-party software on Windows, Google Chrome, by mid-2018, will no longer allow outside applications to run code within its web browser. If you are unaware, many third-party applications, like accessibility or antivirus software, inject code into your web browser for gaining more control over your online activities in order to offer some additional features and function properly. However, Google notes that over 15 percent of Chrome users running third-party applications on their Windows machines that inject code into their web browsers experience crashes—and trust me it's really annoying. But don't you worry. Google now has a solution to this issue. In a blog post published Thursday on Chromium Blog, Google announced its plan to block third-party software from injecting code into Chrome—and these changes will take place in three steps: April 2018 — With the release of Chrome 66, Google will begin informing use

Ever since the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft has been heavily pushing its Edge browser, claiming it to be the best web browser over its competitors like Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome in terms of speed and battery performance. However, Microsoft must admit that most users make use of Edge or Internet Explorer only to download Chrome, which is by far the world's most popular internet browser. Something hilarious happened recently during a live demonstration when a Microsoft engineer caught on a video switching from Edge to Chrome after the default Windows 10 browser stopped responding in the middle of the presentation. That is really embarrassing. The incident happened in the middle of a Microsoft Ignite conference, where the Microsoft presenter Michael Leworthy was demonstrating how to one can migrate their applications and data to Microsoft Azure cloud service. See what happens in the video below: However, Leworthy was forced to pause his Azure presenta