Chrome Loosens Its Safe Browsing System for a Performance Boost

Google is adjusting its Safe Browsing system to increase Chrome’s performance.

This change is introduced in Chrome 122, which begins rollout the week of February 18th.

The Chrome 122 update introduces “asynchronous” Safe Browsing checks.

Essentially, Chrome will begin loading a pagebeforeit receives a response from the Safe Browsing system.

Trustworthy sites should load more quickly, as Safe Browsing no longer acts as a barrier.

This is a clear and intentional loosening of the Safe Browsing system.

However, Google says that asynchronous checking will not reduce user security.

So, Chrome will continue using old-fashioned “synchronous” checks for such exploits.

Chrome is also eliminating sub-resource Safe Browsing checks.

Sub-resources used to be a popular vector for malware, though this trend has greatly declined.

Going forward, Chrome will use client-side technologies to identify malicious sub-resources.

Such technologies already exist within the Chrome net web surfer.

And, interestingly, Chrome has reduced the frequency at which it checks PDF downloads.

These changes will be introduced in theChrome 122update.

Note that these changes only affect Chrome’s Safe Search protocol.