Google Chrome has gotten a brand new security feature, but
not all users will be able to use it. Google Chrome is without a doubt the most
popular internet browser in the world and it doesn’t look like it will lose
that crown anytime soon.
Latest Net Market Share stats for the first three months of
2018 give the search engine giant’s browser a huge 61.26 percent market share.
Its nearest challenger is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with
a 12.43 percent chunk of the market, followed by Firefox on 10.73 percent.
Whereas Microsoft’s newer Edge browser, which is the default
choice on Windows 10, lags behind on 4.49 percent. These stats underline how Chrome’s
crown as the world’s most popular internet browser is undisputed and as it
continues to keep a stranglehold on the market.
Google Chrome’s millions of users have received a big update
and Chrome 65 was released last month on Mac, Windows and Linux before
launching on Android devices.
On Android, the update brought with it changes such as new
language preferences and a simplified view for reading articles. Interestingly,
it also brought with a new feature that will help bolster security on mobile
devices.
With Chrome 65 screenshots are now blocked on Android devices
when a user is browsing privately. When someone tries to capture a screen grab,
even if it’s just the start page for Incognito mode, they won’t be able to.
Instead, they will be greeted with a “couldn’t capture
screenshot” notification from Android system, 9to5Google reported.
However, this feature, believe to be a way of improving
security, is only for Android devices. Screenshots can still be captured from
Google Chrome’s Incognito mode on other devices.
Future versions of Chrome on Android, which are currently in
beta, were tested by 9to5Google and they all still include this new feature.
Whereas versions lower than Chrome 65 have the feature
disabled. In other Chrome news, users last month were put on alert about an
extension from the Chrome Web Store.
Cyber security firm check point uncovered the issue with the
Chrome Remote Desktop extension. Google Chrome users on Android have got a
brand new security feature of their analysts noticed “unexpected behavior” when
the Google Chrome Remote Desktop Application was running on macOS
In a blog post, Check Point explained how the bug could let a
user log in as a guest but still gain administrator privileges. They said, “One
of our security analysts recently noticed an unexpected behavior in Google
Chrome Remote Desktop Application on macOS.”
The strange behavior allows, in some cases, a ‘Guest user’ to
login as Guest and yet receive an active session of another user (such as
administrator) without entering a password. Check Point Research reported this bug
to Google on 15th Feb’ 2018.
Google responded that from CRD (Chrome Remote Desktop_
perspective. “As we see it this is a security issue and believe users should be
alert to the risk of letting a guest remotely access their machine.”
The ‘guest user’ feature is not enabled by default on macOS,
so the Chrome exploit will not affect Mac users who are yet to set this feature
live.
