Google Chrome adds Protection against Meltdown and Spectre

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, Jan 26, 2018.

  1. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

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  2. JamesSneed

    JamesSneed Ancient Guru

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    Love the mute tab idea.
     
    Robbo9999 likes this.
  3. Robbo9999

    Robbo9999 Ancient Guru

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    Ha, yep, I just used it, great idea!

    To other folks and anyone out there, does the included Meltdown & Spectre fix in this latest version of Chrome do the same thing as "Strict Site Isolation" in this chrome flag? chrome://flags/#enable-site-per-process
    Or is it better to leave "Strict Site Isolation" enabled in the new version of Chrome? (Enabling "Strict Site Isolation" was advised to protect against Meltdown & Spectre on the previous version of Chrome, but don't know if it's necessary in this new version). At the moment I have "Strict Site Isolation" enabled on the latest version of Chome (Chrome 64), and it seems fine - I have a feeling that this flag provides protection above & beyond the Meltdown/Spectre fix shipped with Chrome version 64.
     
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2018
  4. BlackZero

    BlackZero Guest

    I was wondering the same thing, as the message in the setting reads the feature is highly experimental and could in fact compromise security (?), and I've recently had trouble logging into some sites.

    I've decided to disable it for now, as the new update is obviously already meant to take care of the issue.
     

  5. RealNC

    RealNC Ancient Guru

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    Do you happen to know why they excluded Linux from this?
     
  6. Robbo9999

    Robbo9999 Ancient Guru

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    I did some research just now and found the official in depth description of Strict Site Isolation from the people who developed the software: http://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/site-isolation
    You won't compromise security by enabling it - security is increased by enabling it. Because it's experimental it has a few bugs in some rare cases, the bugs are shown at the above link too, the bugs aren't security related. Here's the list of bugs I copied & pasted from the link above:
    • Higher memory use (about 10-20% when isolating all sites with many tabs open).
      This overhead can be greatly reduced by only isolating certain sites, as noted below, and is expected to drop to about 10% in the heaviest cases in Chrome 64.

    • When printing a page, cross-site iframes appear blank.
      To print the complete web page content, save the page locally, then open and print the saved file.

    • In some cases, clicking or scrolling on cross-site iframes may not work properly.
      For example, this can happen when there is a partly transparent overlay above an iframe. (This is fixed in Chrome 65.)

    • When using the "Isolating all sites" approach below, Gmail may not load properly if started from the Gmail icon on chrome://apps.
      To work around this, visit https://mail.google.com rather than using the Gmail icon on chrome://apps. (This is fixed in Chrome 64.)

    • Gmail Offline, Calendar Offline, and some other hosted apps may not work properly. (This is fixed in Chrome 64.)



    [and this is me typing now] I think it's worth leaving enabling Site Isolation, it goes above & beyond the Spectre/Meltdown fix.
     
  7. BlackZero

    BlackZero Guest

    Thanks for the explanation.

    I think i'll just leave it disabled. With all the logging in issues I've had, it's more hassle than it's worth on a home PC.
     
  8. tsunami231

    tsunami231 Ancient Guru

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    FF added protection to this like week or so ago, why did they not get headlines news too, what so special about chrome??? XD
     
  9. lucidus

    lucidus Ancient Guru

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    I hope they add protection from miners too :p
     
  10. TheDeeGee

    TheDeeGee Ancient Guru

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  11. nick0323

    nick0323 Maha Guru

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    Edge got protection in the first rushed Windows Update after Spectre. No announcements there.
     
  12. xIcarus

    xIcarus Guest

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    Chrome has a lot of fanboys, I'm guessing people want to convince each other their browser is best.
    I'm not trying to light a pyre in here, it's just true. I'm tired of non-knowledgeable and even some knowledgeable people asking crap like 'why would you use anything else than Chrome?'.
     
  13. OddGentleman

    OddGentleman Guest

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    and I'm tired of "why did they not get headlines news too" when the answer is obvious. Who do you write news about considering that Chrome is 60% of all browser users while FF is 10%
     
  14. xIcarus

    xIcarus Guest

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    Your argument implies that a 10% marketshare is small.
    It's not.
     
  15. RealNC

    RealNC Ancient Guru

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    If a billion people use a web browser, 10% is 100 million people. Totally not newsworthy...

    /s
     

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