Virtual Event: Threat Detection and Incident Response Summit - Watch Sessions
Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Mobile & Wireless

Google Brings Safe Browsing to Chrome for Android

Google this week announced the availability of Google Safe Browsing technology in its Chrome browser for Android, a feature meant to keep users safe from malware, unwanted software, and social engineering sites.

Google this week announced the availability of Google Safe Browsing technology in its Chrome browser for Android, a feature meant to keep users safe from malware, unwanted software, and social engineering sites.

The Internet giant has integrated Safe Browsing in Google Play Services version 8.1, and Chrome for Android version 46 and up is the first application to take advantage of the security enhancement. Users can head to Settings > Privacy menu in Chrome on their Android devices to check whether Safe Browsing is enabled, the company explained in a blog post.

The feature has been available on Chrome for desktop for a long time, informing users when they were about to access a dangerous site. With Safe Browsing available on Android, users can now be warned on the risk of accessing a flagged website, such as social engineering, phishing, and other malicious web pages.

According to Google, the main challenge of providing such protection on a mobile device is related to data size, as mobile data costs more and is delivered at lower speeds. With network bandwidth and battery being the most valuable resources on a mobile device, the company decided to break threats by geo location and to send information to protect devices only to the regions targeted by the attacks.

Moreover, the company decided to deliver information on the riskiest sites first, to ensure the data is more relevant, and also tried to compress it as much as possible, to ensure data transfer savings. The software running on devices uses fewer resources and minimizes network traffic, in an attempt to ensure longer battery life.

“Some social engineering attacks only happen in certain parts of the world, so we only send information that protects devices in the geographic regions they’re in. We also make sure that we send information about the riskiest sites first: if we can only get a very short update through, as is often the case on lower-speed networks in emerging economies, the update really has to count,” the company said.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.
Written By

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

SecurityWeek’s Threat Detection and Incident Response Summit brings together security practitioners from around the world to share war stories on breaches, APT attacks and threat intelligence.

Register

Securityweek’s CISO Forum will address issues and challenges that are top of mind for today’s security leaders and what the future looks like as chief defenders of the enterprise.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Mobile & Wireless

Infonetics Research has shared excerpts from its Mobile Device Security Client Software market size and forecasts report, which tracks enterprise and consumer security client...

Mobile & Wireless

Apple rolled out iOS 16.3 and macOS Ventura 13.2 to cover serious security vulnerabilities.

Mobile & Wireless

Critical security flaws expose Samsung’s Exynos modems to “Internet-to-baseband remote code execution” attacks with no user interaction. Project Zero says an attacker only needs...

Mobile & Wireless

Technical details published for an Arm Mali GPU flaw leading to arbitrary kernel code execution and root on Pixel 6.

Mobile & Wireless

Two vulnerabilities in Samsung’s Galaxy Store that could be exploited to install applications or execute JavaScript code by launching a web page.

Mobile & Wireless

The February 2023 security updates for Android patch 40 vulnerabilities, including multiple high-severity escalation of privilege bugs.

Mobile & Wireless

Apple’s iOS 12.5.7 update patches CVE-2022-42856, an actively exploited vulnerability, in old iPhones and iPads.

Cybercrime

A digital ad fraud scheme dubbed "VastFlux" spoofed over 1,700 apps and peaked at 12 billion ad requests per day before being shut down.