Chrome regularly "monitors" the contents of the PC



Google's browser "Chrome" as of April 2018The most widely used browser in the worldHowever, from a security expert tweet, it turns out that Chrome is scanning the folder of the user's PC, and one view that "it is seen inside the PC without knowing" is one thing It is spreading in the department. Actually, however, this scan operation is in accordance with Chrome's "specifications" and it is the operation to protect the PC.

Chrome Is Scanning Files on Your Computer, and People Are Freaking Out - Motherboard
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wj7x9w/google-chrome-scans-files-on-your-windows-computer-chrome-cleanup-tool

The matter became clear from the following tweets that Tweet by Kerry Short Ridge of cybersecurity company "SecurityScorecard" tweeted. I wondered that the folder named "Canarytoken" was the subject of the scan, and confirmed that Chrome was the "culprit". Short Ridge said, "Chrome is doing anti-virus scanning of Windows devices last fall (2017) during the fall of 2017. What is this? This folder is not in the system directory but in the" Documents "folder There are tweets ".


It is an event that many users think "Chrome is looking around the PC without knowing", but in reality this is a scan Chrome is doing to protect the PC from cyber attacks , Which is officially announced by GoogleChrome Cleanup ToolIt's part of the function. This tool aims to monitor the threat against safety after limiting the target to the part related to the browser, and to "literally" clean up "at the time of abnormality discovery. The function was released in October 2017, and details can be confirmed in the following article.

Three new features are implemented, including scanning and deleting problematic software in the Chrome browser for Windows - GIGAZINE


This feature is said to be implemented in Chrome for Windows. Also, when scanning the cyber security companyESETAnti virus engine is used to check the existence of malware targeted to Chrome. The operation is done once a week, only general user rights are given, so it is not possible to access important files of the system. And when something abnormality is confirmed, it is designed to ask the user to confirm whether to delete it, and it is designed so that the file will not be deleted without knowing it.


Nonetheless, it is also a fact that there are a lot of voices saying "I did not know this", Short Ridge said, "In this era, Google does not publish detailed material, I was shocked to scan inside of it. " Google has announced the function in the blog, but it is certainly true that not all people will look through. In that sense, if there was a dialog saying "I'm going to scan from now on" before the scan is done, it may not have been unnecessary confusion.

Regarding this matter, Harun Mahr, founder of security consulting firm "Thinkst" said, "There is no one who wants to be surprised, people watch dictators, Tech world giants have grown too big, browsers Trying to access a file that originally had no relation would invite people's cautiousness. "

ByTsahi Levent-Levi

Justin Shu of Google's Chrome security team said that "The purpose is to detect and delete unwanted software that exploits Chrome." Also, it is said that the program code is "sandboxed" and isolated from other programs, and that it is only the user who clicks the "delete program" button in the confirmation dialog to actually delete the file I point to a point.

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in Software,   Security, Posted by darkhorse_log