Published in News

Microsoft finds hole in Chrome

by on23 October 2017


Pot calls kettle?

Software king of the world Microsoft has poured much scorn on Google's Chrome browser for having a rather large security hole.

In a blog post, Redmond examined Google's browser security and took the opportunity to throw some gloom at Chrome's security philosophy, while also touting the benefits of its own Edge browser. The post, written by Microsoft security team member Jordan Rabet, noted that Google's Chrome browser uses "sandboxing" and isolation techniques designed to contain any malicious code. Nevertheless, Microsoft still managed to find a security hole in Chrome that could be used to execute malicious code on the browser.

The bug involved a Javascript engine in Chrome. Microsoft notified Google about the problem, which was patched last month. Vole even received a $7,500 reward for finding the flaw. However, Microsoft made sure to point out that its own Edge browser was protected from the same kind of security threat.

It slammed Google for the way it handled the patching process. Prior to the patch's official rollout, the source code for the fix was made public on GitHub, a software collaboration site that hosts computer code. That meant attentive hackers could have learned about the vulnerability before the patch was pushed out to customers, Microsoft claimed. "In this specific case, the stable channel of Chrome remained vulnerable for nearly a month", the blog post said. "That is more than enough time for an attacker to exploit it."

In the past Google has also disclosed vulnerabilities found in Microsoft products - including Edge.

Last modified on 23 October 2017
Rate this item
(0 votes)

Read more about: