Measure vs. Spectrum: Chrome now more secure and with more RAM needed

What has been manually enabled since Chrome 63, is now standard with Chrome 67: Google will immediately activate what is called "site isolation" for almost all users. With the special separation of memory areas one wants to increase security, the RAM requirement however increases too.

Site Isolation to Help Specter & Co.

Chrome Now Saves Data from Different Domains in Its Own Processes

As is often the case with many other browsers, Chrome also opens its own process for each new tab, a mechanism that primarily serves program stability. With the "Isolation Site" since Chrome 63 with a very similar approach, browser security can be further enhanced, but makes the feature up to now an option that should be actively selected by the user. However, as Google has announced in a blog post, "Site Isolation" with Chrome 67 is now enabled by default.

When a web page is accessed, the browser usually accesses multiple domains – with WinFuture, for example, the advertisements provided by Google are delivered when the page is opened. Due to site isolation, the tab process is now subdivided for security reasons: Data from different domains on a website is therefore outsourced to different processes.

The special attack types, which must be prevented up to here among others by the well-known security concept "Policy of the same origin", according to Google, can be much more effectively eliminated with the new parameter Chrome standard. Such attacks theoretically allow, for example, to divert entries to linked domain websites.

Performance of security costs

As Google points out itself, because of the vulnerabilities of the Specter and Meltdown processor, they also decided to use the standard "Site Isolation" to add a new layer of protection to Chrome. "Splitting a page into multiple processes is a big change in the way Chrome works," the developers said. Independent of Specter, the team pursued this goal "for several years". But with "Isolation of the site", which pushes Chrome to use more processes, Google says that it "also compromises performance". Thus, the new security mechanism will increase the browser's RAM requirements by 10-13%.

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2018-07 -13T16: 54: 00 + 02: 00 John Woll