Internet giant, Google announced its finished working on its Flash sandbox in the Windows version of Chrome.
Google, which launched Chrome 21 on July 31, will be dropping NPAPI (Netscape Plug-in Application Programming Interface) Flash plug-in for PPAPI (Pepper Plug-in Application Programming Interface) standard. The change Google will allow the company to put Adobe plug-in into a "sandbox" which will be as strong as the one protecting Chrome.
"Windows Flash is now inside a sandbox that's as strong as Chrome's native sandbox, and dramatically more robust than anything else available," said Justin Schuh, a Chrome engineer on Wednesday.
Sandbox is security mechanism that separates processes on the computer preventing malwares from letting hackers attach any vulnerable patches.
In fact, Chrome was the first one to sandbox Flash Player, in 2011 Google used a Windows sandbox for Flash. In May 2012, Adobe sandboxed Flash plug-in for Mozilla Firefox. Earlier, the sandbox for Flash in Chrome was available on Windows Vista and Windows 7. Now since Chrome 21 has moved to PPAPI, Google has extended it to Windows XP.
"[That's] critical given the absence of OS support for security features like ASLR and integrity levels [in Windows XP]," said Schuh. He also said that Chrome was run by nearly 100 million Windows XP users.
Net application, a Web analytics company, in July, Windows XP powered 46.6 percent of all Windows PCs that went online. Crashes will be down by 20 percent by porting of Flash to PPAPI, preparing grounds for Chrome to debut on Windows 8 which Microsoft will start shipping from Oct 26.
"Because PPAPI doesn't let the OS bleed through, it's the only way to use all Flash features on any site in Windows 8 Metro mode," said Schuh referring to the UI of Windows 8. Though a fully-sandboxed Flash Player plug-in is yet to be included in Chrome on OS X, the team "hope[s] to ship it soon."
