Chrome's Flash implementation now fully sandboxed, internal settings coming

Martin Brinkmann
Jul 11, 2012
Updated • Nov 22, 2012
Google Chrome
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Google is continuing its work on integrating Adobe's Flash Player into the Chrome browser. While the company has made great progress in recent time in doing so, the developers today announced that they have fully sandboxed Chrome's Flash implementation on all versions of the Windows operating system.

Chrome developer Justin Schuh posted the news on his own Twitter account stating that the Chrome 21 beta release "has fully sandboxed Flash on all versions of Windows ". A fully sandboxed version of Flash in Chrome isolates the plugin from the browser core, other browser processes, and the operating system.  A fully sandboxed Flash plugin makes it more difficulty for attackers to take advantage of vulnerabilities in Flash as the underlying system and browser core is better protected.

Since the fully sandboxed version of Flash is currently available in Chrome 21 Beta, it means that stable users will have to wait some more until their browser moves to that version of Chrome.

Some beta users are reporting issues with Flash contents on YouTube and other sites. While it is not clear if this has been caused by the improved sandboxing feature, they may be related. Still, it is a beta product and bugs and issues are to be expected.

Google is also preparing another Flash-related improvement for its Chrome browser. According to François Beaufort, the company is going to integrate - at least part of - the Adobe Flash Player control panel into the browser natively. As of right now Flash settings can only be modified on the Adobe website.

Two new features are already available for Google Chrome Canary users: first a new Flash camera and microphone preference under Content Settings, and second a deauthorize content licenses option under Clear Browsing Data.

chrome-flash-camera-microphone

It is likely that Google will improve Flash support further in future versions of the browser.

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Comments

  1. ilev said on July 12, 2012 at 9:26 am
    Reply

    Pity Chrome v.21 beta is still on Flash 11,3,31,208 .

  2. Jim said on July 11, 2012 at 10:39 pm
    Reply

    No mention of Chromium or Linux. Did they kick us to the curb again?

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