Google sandboxes Flash in Chrome for Mac OS X

In a new blog post, the Chrome developers at Google have highlighted additional security improvements in the recent stable release of Chrome for Mac OS X users. The latest major update to Chrome for Mac OS X, version 23, is the first release of the browser for the platform to include a fully sandboxed Flash Player plugin.

On Mac, Chrome's built-in Flash Player now uses a new plugin architecture: the developers ported Flash from the older Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI) to Google's Pepper Plugin API (PPAPI) architecture, its cross-platform API for plugins. According to Google Software Engineer Scott Hess, the new architecture means that Flash can now run "inside a sandbox that’s as strong as Chrome’s native sandbox, and much more robust than anything else available."

The new safeguards in the latest Chrome release for Mac OS X mean that all of the browser's supported desktop platforms, including Windows, Linux and Chrome OS, now have fully sandboxed Flash Player plugins. While Chrome OS has had Flash sandboxing since the beginning, the Linux version of Chrome added the new API in version 20 in June, and Chrome for Windows improved the sandboxing of the browser's Flash plugin in Chrome 21.

Released one week ago for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, Chrome 23 also closed several security holes, added support for the Do Not Track (DNT) privacy setting and improved battery life for some users.

See also:

• Chrome 24 enters beta with new developer features, a report from The H.

(crve)