Chrome is about to monopolize your RAM even more

Google has released a major security update for Chrome to help prevent you from taking a Spectrum-related attack via its browser. But it also means that you might have a poorer performance on your computer.
Credit: Shutterstock As a reminder, Specter (and Meltdown) were discovered earlier Vulnerabilities affect a large number of Intel and AMD chips ( including those that currently work on your computer) and access parts of memory that they should not have access to. While the problem is more important than the browser, Google has noted in a This vulnerability is of particular concern to browsers Web because browsers run potentially malicious JavaScript codes from multiple websites, often in the same process, "writes Google. "In theory, a website could use such an attack to steal information from other sites, in violation of the same origin policy."

To work around possible Specter threats, all major web browsers have developed some ways to work around Specter threats by modifying JavaScript compiler functions, among other techniques.

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Google, however, believes that something called Site Isolation is the best way to protect yourself from Specter. And that's what's activated in your browser.

Site isolation is designed to limit processes to individual pages. So, if you have multiple tabs open, each page will have its own process running and they will not share them. This means that the data will not flee as easily to hackers. And when a site tries to access sensitive information via a Specter attack, the chances of all your information being transmitted to hackers are slim.

"This means that even if a Specter attack were to occur on a malicious web page, the data from other sites would generally not be loaded into the same process, and there would be much less data available for Attacker, "wrote Google in his blog. "This greatly reduces the threat posed by Specter."

According to Google, it has now enabled site isolation for 99% of Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS users who run Chrome 67. And although this change has been won the technology will require 10 to 13% more RAM. And unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to reduce this use of RAM.

Still, Google says it's safer. And he plans to work on optimizations in the future to reduce the RAM load.