Safe Browsing in Google Chrome Now Works in Real Time

JAKARTA – Google launched the latest version of Safe Browsing, a service for identifying dangerous websites, in Chrome. Through this update, Safe Browsing can protect websites in real-time.

Before this update rolls out, Chrome should check the sites users visit against a locally stored list of unsafe sites. However, this hash-based checking works in a non-fast manner.

Unsecured sites begin to adapt and can last less than 10 minutes, in contrast to the local site list update system which is updated every 30 to 60 minutes. In this way, many sites escape Google's supervision.

"Many sites have fallen through the cracks and could potentially cause damage if users visit them," Google said. "Safe Browsing's list of dangerous websites continues to grow rapidly. Not all devices have the resources necessary to maintain this growing list."

Therefore, Google switched to real-time protection with enhanced protection mode. By switching to real-time protection, Google will check all visited sites through its Safe Browsing servers.

"The server-side list can include unsafe sites as soon as they are discovered, catching sites that move quickly. This number can also grow as needed because the server is not limited," Google explains.

In the process of working, Chrome will check the cache of the visited URL first. If the URL is not in the cache, Google will feel that the site is unsafe and will need to do a real-time check.

Chrome will obfuscate URLs by following the hashing guide to converting and truncating hashes. Once the prefix hash is encrypted, the hash will be sent to the privacy server and the Safe Browsing server will match against the server-side database.

If a match is found that the URL being visited is unsafe, Chrome will warn the user. During this vetting process, Google says they only look at the URL hash prefix and not the user's IP address.