More Bad News for Chrome.
In what has got to be the worst launch of any piece of software (at least one that had positive Hype) Google’s new browser Chrome keeps popping up with new bad news.
From the day of its release as a Beta Chrome has been through the gamut. Many sites initially claimed it was the second coming before having to retract when news of major security flaws and privacy issues surfaced around the web. Now it would appear that Google has not only borrowed parts from Apple, FireFox and Opera but also from Microsoft.
Yes buried beneath the shiny surface researchers have found Microsoft’s Windows Template Library Version 8.0. This little nugget was discovered by none other than Microsoft’s Senior Program Manager, Scott Hanselman. There are some speculated reasons behind Google’s use of this code but it would seem that with WTL you can product executables without the need for the MS Foundation Libraries. This should enable you to write applications that are small and quick.
But there is more, According to Hanselman “The Chromium authors may have disassembled part of the Windows Kernel in order to achieve this security feature under Windows XP SP2,"
This, if true, is a violation of US copyright laws and could be bad for Google, although Hanselman did say it appears they did this to enable DEP and for other security reasons.
It makes me wonder if there was more to this reverse engineering as my investigations have found that Chrome is able to read and write directly to the System Volume Information folder. But that is for another article…