X

Chrome suffers first security flaw

Researcher Rishi Narang discloses a malicious link that can crash the new browser. In Google-speak, "Whoa!"

Robert Vamosi Former Editor
As CNET's former resident security expert, Robert Vamosi has been interviewed on the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and other outlets to share his knowledge about the latest online threats and to offer advice on personal and corporate security.
Robert Vamosi

On Wednesday, researchers announced a flaw in how the Google Chrome browser behaves with undefined handlers. An exploit provided as a demonstration crashes the new browser.

In an article on the Securiteam site, Rishi Narang from Evilfingers says a crash can occur without user interaction. If a user is provided a malicious link with an undefined handler followed by a special character, Chrome crashes.

In Google-speak, the browser displays a message "Whoa, Google Chrome has crashed. Restart now?"

Narang found the fault in chrome.dll version 0.2.149.27. More details can be found on this Evilfingers page.

And on Tuesday, mere hours after Chrome was released, researcher Aviv Raff concocted a proof-of-concept demo to show how the Google browser could be made vulnerable to a carpet-bombing flaw and thus open a window for ill-intentioned hackers.

Click here for full coverage of the Google Chrome launch.