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Google Chrome Developers On Browser Security

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the never-ending-war-of-escalation dept.

CowboyRobot writes "Developers of Google's Chrome browser have spoken up in an article describing their approach to keeping the browser secure, focusing on minimizing the frequency, duration, and severity of exposure. One tool Chrome uses is a recently open-sourced update distribution application called 'Omaha.' 'Omaha automatically checks for software updates every five hours. When a new update is available, a fraction of clients are told about it, based on a probability set by the team. This probability lets the team verify the quality of the release before informing all clients.'"

3 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Beta testers by jayme0227 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's certainly better than having the entire user base beta test the patch for them which is where we're at now in most cases.

    --
    But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
  2. Now for a better scheduler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now if they could stop running googleupdate crap ALL THE TIME (maybe use the OSs built in scheduling system to run every so often) and give me more control over when/how things get updated it will be much better.

    1. Re:Now for a better scheduler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It _is_ killable - ironically, part of what you have to do is delete the job from the scheduler which restarts the damn thing every so often.

      It could do with a more user friendly ticky box to turn it off, but it's not completely evil.

      One thing I've never understood is why MS didn't expose the Windows Update facilities to other vendors (with user approval, of course.) A one-stop shop for updates a la Ubuntu's Update Manager would be a hell of a lot less messy, and it would actually work for people who do the Right Thing and don't run with Admin / Power User privileges.