Following the Spectre announced in January by Google, the Chrome browser has received an upgrade called site isolation in its core to prevent this specific vulnerability.
Since Google launched Chrome, its operating system has been a little different from other browsers in that when the program is running, there is not just one process. For security reasons, the load is shared across multiple processes to prevent information from leaking from one tab to another. Google has now introduced a more stringent version of this logic (site isolation) to make it more secure from the Spectre attack, which it discovered in January in collaboration with other researchers.
The first version of the stricter site isolation policy was released in May with Chrome version 67, but it wasn't enabled by default. Now, the new feature is enabled for 99% of users across Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS.
Technology companies that make processors, operating systems and browsers have collaborated to prevent the vulnerability, through which someone could gain access to passwords or encryption keys.
Implementing site isolation is a big change for the browser. It modifies the renderer, which translates the code of a page into the final result that we see. With site isolation, Chrome separates renderers into separate processes for greater security. Unfortunately, this consumes more RAM, which can be up to 13% more.
“Our team is working hard to optimize the app’s resource consumption while maintaining security and speed. We are also working on the Android version, which is not yet available,” said Reis, a member of the Chrome development team.
