Chrome blocks drive-by-downloads to prevent accidental downloads

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Updated onOctober 4, 2023

updated onOctober 4, 2023

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After browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer blocked drive-by-downloads, Chrome 73 is going to do the same.

Google Chromeis a gigantic browsing platform that offers unlimited browsing worldwide. Since it operates millions of users across the globe, Google takes every step necessary to ensure secure browsing withmaximum productivity.

Google already introduced other safe features such as Safe Browsing, Sandboxing and site isolation. The company took this safety strategy one step further and introduced a new Chrome security update that will block down drive-by-downloads forsafe browsing.

Drive-by-downloads are unintendeddownloads. In other words, thedownloadsthat occur without the consent of the user. Thesedownloads, mostly those originating from iFrames, containmalicious codewhich can threaten the personal information of the user.

In a public document, Google imparts to block only those drive-by-downloads that originate from iFrames and lack user gesture. According to the officials, “We plan to preventdownloadsin sandboxed iframes that lack a user gesture, and this restriction could be lifted via an ‘allow-downloads-without-user-activation’ keyword if present in the sandbox attribute list.”

The new security update puts an end to those drive-by-downloads which satisfy the following conditions:

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The document issues by Google also communicates that the security update will fail the drive-by-downloadswithout making any notable change. However, developers will receive a console-error.

For the non-technical visitors of WindowsReport, iFrame is an HTML element that is used to embed another webpage inside one webpage. These iFrames are hidden within the layout of the webpage and can install malware without your authorization.

This new update would be available on all platforms by March or April excluding iOS. This is because this kind of security is not supported on WebKit(iOS is based on WebKit engine).

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Chrome blocks drive-by-downloads to prevent accidental downloads