Mozilla discovers serious flaw in Google Chrome

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 26 Aug 2009 at 16:06

They might now be rivals, but Mozilla has given its colleagues at Google a helping hand by uncovering a serious flaw in the Chrome browser.

The security hole in Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine would have allowed attackers to run arbitrary code within the Chrome browser. Google has now patched the hole, and credited Mozilla's Security team for discovering the flaw on the Chrome Releases blog.

Despite owning competing browsers, Mozilla and Google still foster a close relationship. The vast majority of Mozilla's revenue is derived from a search deal that sees Google appear as the default Firefox homepage and in the browser's search bar.

Google's Chrome team have also fixed another bug in the year-old browser which prevents users from visiting HTTPS sites whose certificates are signed using MD2 or MD4 hashing algorithms. Google claims these algorithms are too weak and could result in people being sent to spoof sites.

Discovery of this flaw was credited to Dam Kaminsky, the man who uncovered the critical DNS flaw that could potentially have brought the entire internet to its knees, before it was fixed by a group of leading security experts last year.