Chrome Connecting To Random Domains On Start? Here Is Why!

If you are monitoring your network traffic closely you may have noticed that the Google Chrome web browser and its Open Source counterpart Chromium are both trying to connect to three random ten letter words on start up. For most users, it is not clear why the browser is making those connections, and some have even assumed that they were either made to send information privately to Google, for tracking purposes, or even caused by malware running on the system.

Mike West analyzed the part of the browser’s source code that was responsible for making the connections. He discovered that Chrome and Chromium are making those connections to help the browser’s Omnibox figure out user intents correctly.

The issue that Google aims to fix with these connections is easily explained. Some Internet Service Providers have started to intercept requests that do not resolve properly. If you enter ghacks for instance in the address bar and tap on the return key afterwards, Chrome needs to figure out if you want to search for the term ghacks, or if you want to visit the site http://ghacks/. Since it cannot do that, it displays an infobar if the word would resolve to an existing domain name giving the user the chance to open the domain with another click.

When ISPs intercept the lookups to display their own error pages, usually filled with advertisement and search options, then it appears to the browser as if the word would resolve just fine. This in turn would mean that users would see the infobox in the browser even for words that do not resolve.

To prevent this, Google is making these three initial lookups on start up to see if ISPs intercept requests that cannot be resolved. It compares the IP addresses of the pages that are returned, and turns the infobox off if they are identical (as this suggests an ISP is intercepting the look ups).

How can you find out if Chrome or Chromium are making those requests? You can use programs that monitor traffic on the system. One example would be the free tool Fiddler which can show you the connections the browser makes.

The three random connections are highlighted in the screenshot above.

The three connections are nothing that users need to worry about. Thanks Mike for finding that out for us.

How To Turn Chrome or Firefox Into A Single-Site Browser

A Single-Site browser serves a very specific purpose. You use it to access one, and sometimes a handful, of websites and services on the Internet. This can be financial sites, your email accounts or other sites with personal information like a medical related sites. The basic idea is to block access to all other sites to protect the account and information from certain attack forms like cross site scripting or clickjacking.

All connections are blocked except to those sites that you have explicitly allowed. This means that third party scripts won’t be loaded if they originate on a non-whitelisted domain, and that you won’t be able to open third party sites manually in the browser.

This guide demonstrates how to turn Firefox and Google Chrome into a single-site browser. Inspiration has been taken from Vasa’s post over at the Wilders Security Forum.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome users can make use of the –host-rules parameter to block all domain connections except the ones they whitelist. The general parameter looks like this:

--host-rules="MAP * 127.0.0.1, EXCLUDE *.ghacks.net"

This redirects all connection attempts to localhost, except for connections to the ghacks.net site or one of its subdomains.

You can also add multiple inclusions in the following way:

--host-rules="MAP * 127.0.0.1, EXCLUDE *.ghacks.net","MAP * 127.0.0.1, EXCLUDE *.microsoft.com"

Windows users can add the parameter to Chrome in the following way:

• Locate a Chrome shortcut in the Start Menu, Taskbar or Desktop
• Right-click the shortcut and select Properties
• Append the parameter to the end of the Target listing, with a space in between.
• Click Ok to apply the settings.

You could alternatively create a second shortcut to use it for accessing your important sites, and keep the general shortcut for all other sites that you visit in the browser.

Firefox

Mozilla Firefox users need to install the SimpleBlock extension for their browser first. They then need to create a SimpleBlock.ini file in the user profile folder and add a regular expression to it to allow access to certain sites.

R: https?://(?!(My.bank.com|Second.site.com|Third.site.com))

This would allow access to the three domains mentioned above, and block all other connection attempts.

It is probably best to create a new user profile for this. You can use an add-on like Switchy or the new Firefox profile manager application.

Closing Words

It is best to create new profiles or shortcuts to work with Single-Site browsers. Security add-ons like NoScript can mitigate the issues if they are configured properly.

How To Disable The New Tab Page In Chrome

If you are on the Google Chrome Stable channel you may have noticed that Google recently changed the new tab page in the web browser. The page now opens with the most visited sites and navigational elements on the right and bottom of the screen to switch to the web apps listing or bookmarks. The Internet and especially Google’s Help forum is full of users who want their old new tab page back and disable the new one.

There is a way currently to do that on the stable channel. Users on the Dev channel, which is Chrome 17 right now, cannot use that method anymore which indicates that it is only a temporary solution for the time being.

What you need to do is to add the startup parameter --new-tab-page to the web browser start. Close all instances of the Chrome browser on your system. Windows users can right-click the Chrome executable and select Properties from the context menu. The Chrome executable is located in the user directory. Windows 7 users find it under C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\

The Google Chrome Properties menu pops up once you have selected properties from the context menu. Append --new-tab-page at the end of the Target path (leaving a blank inbetween) and save the changes with a click on OK.

When you start Chrome again you should be able to work with the old new tab page again.

But what if the flag is no longer working? Your only option then is to install a third party extension to change the new tab page of the browser. You could install extensions like Define your own new tab to create your own tab page, New Tab Redirect to select a specific web address that is loaded when the new tab button is activated, Empty New Tab page for a blank page or Awesome New tab Page for a customizable tab page.

What’s your take on the new tab page in Chrome?

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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List Pages That Get Prerendered by Google Chrome

Prerendering in the best case speeds up specific processes. When it comes to web browsers the technology could pre-load and render websites to display them faster for the user. This only works if the browser gets the site right. If you look at a standard web search for instance, you will get ten search results by default plus other pages that you could click on. It would be a tremendous waste of processing power and bandwidth if the browser would load all of those pages, especially if the user would only click on one page of the results.

The Google Chrome web browser, and Chromium as well, use prerendering in a limited way. It may be used when you enter a phrase into the Chrome address bar. But which page or pages do get prerendered when this is happening?

That’s easy to find out (thanks to François Beaufort who posted a short demonstration video on YouTube). All you need to do is to open the Google Chrome or Chromium Task Manager to see which pages get prerendered by the web browser.

You can open the Chrome Task Manager with a click on the Wrench icon, the selection of Tools and Task Manager. You can alternatively use the keyboard shortcut Shift-Esc to bring up the Task Manager directly.

Look for Prerender: entries in the Task Manager. The indicator is followed either by the site url that got prerendered or the page title. It may still take time to identify the prerendered link on the page as Google is not displaying the information in the web browser.

Prerendering in the web browser is automatically enabled. Users who do not want to use the feature can disable it the following way. Enter chrome://flags in the address bar and locate the “Prerender from omnibox” option.

Enables prerendering of suggestions from the Omnibox and predicts appropriate network actions (prerendering, Instant, DNS preconnect) by calculating a confidence value for each Omnibox result.

Switch to disabled in the pulldown menu to turn the feature off.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Disable Google Chrome’s Native PDF Viewer, Flash Plugin

When you look at Google Chrome’s feature set and compare it to that of other browsers like Opera, Internet Explorer or Firefox, you will come to the conclusion that web browsers are more alike than they are different. Two items that will definitely be on the list are the built-in PDF viewer and the native Adobe Flash plugin. (Firefox may get a native pdf viewer in future versions)

Google Chrome users can open pdf documents directly in the browser. While the viewer is not comparable in functionality to desktop pdf readers, it is certainly enough to read a document online.

And native support for Adobe’s Flash technology ensures that Chrome users are automatically updated to the newest version whenever it is released, which improves overall security significantly.

Some Chrome users on the other hand may not want to use the native plugins of the Chrome browser. This can be the case if they have noticed that the Flash plugin is acting up or if they have installed a feature rich pdf reader on their system that they prefer to use.

Chrome, even with another Flash or PDF reader plugin installed, continues to use its native plugins for Flash and PDF contents (see Why are Two Flash Player Plugins Running In Google Chrome? for instance for an explanation).

Users of the Chrome web browser need to disable the native plugins before they can use third party plugins or software instead. This is done by entering chrome://plugins/ in the Chrome address bar and hitting enter.

The page that opens displays a list of all plug-ins currently installed in the Chrome browser. Relevant for this guide are the Flash and Chrome PDF Viewer plugins. A click on Disable below the Chrome PDF Viewer disables those capabilities in the browser.

In regard to Flash, it is a bit more complicated. It is necessary to click on Details first to display all installed Flash plugins in Chrome. Locate the Flash plugin that has its location in the Chrome application folder and click the disable link to disable it. Make sure another Flash plugin is still active if you want to use the technology on the Internet.

That’s how you disable both the native Flash plugin and the native pdf viewer in Google Chrome.

Are you using Google Chrome’s native plugins? Or did you notice issues using those plugins?

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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How To Clear Individual Cookies In Google Chrome

Question on how to clear individual cookies in the Google Chrome web browser just came up and I thought I write a small guide here on Ghacks about it. Google Chrome, just like any other modern web browser, accepts all cookies by default. Cookies are small data packages that are saved by domains on your computer. They can be used for positive things like saving preferences or session data, and negatively perceived things like tracking the user on the Internet.

Google Chrome users can clear all browsing data, which includes cookies but also other data like the browsing and download history, by clicking on the wrench icon in the toolbar and selecting Tools > Clear Browsing Data from the menu that pops up.

It is alternatively possible to use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-Del for the same effect. A window is displayed where the data can be cleared.

Please note that there is a link to the Adobe Flash Player storage settings. If you click on that link you will be taken to Adobe’s Website Storage Settings panel where you can delete all or select Flash cookies.

If you go back to the Chrome browser you may have noticed that the clear browsing data window does not offer to clear individual files. Sometimes you may want to delete a specific cookie or a set of cookies only. This can be handy for web developers testing a new site feature, users who accidentally visited a site and want to delete its traces or users who want to clear personalized data.

The easiest way to clear individual cookies in Google Chrome is to enter chrome://settings/cookies into the address bar. This opens the cookies and other data listing in the browser. All stored cookies are displayed here. It is possible to remove all cookies or search for individual cookies.

A click on a site displays all cookies stored by that site on the computer. It takes another click to display detailed information about the cookie and the Remove button. If you click on Remove the selected cookie will be deleted from the system.

And that’s how you delete standard and Flash cookies in the Chrome web browser individually.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Why are Two Flash Player Plugins Running In Google Chrome?

Most users of the Google Chrome web browser know that Google has integrated Adobe’s Flash Player in cooperation with Adobe into the web browser. The core advantage here is that Google can update the Flash plugin in the browser for its users. That’s a stark contrast to other web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera, where the user has to make sure that Flash updates are installed in a timely manner to protect the computer system from possible exploits and attacks.

If you look at the plugin listing in the Chrome web browser you may notice that the Flash listing says something like Flash (3 files) or Flash (2 files). You need to click on Details on the page to see what’s going on there.

You may notice that multiple Flash plugins are loaded in the Chrome web browser instead of just the native plugin. You can click on the Disable or Enable links to disable or enable specific Flash versions in the browser. This can be handy for Flash developers who need to test their applications in a different version of Flash, and for end users who do not want multiple running plugins in the owser.

Multiple enabled Flash plugin versions in the browser are not a problem according to Google.

It’s normal to see two Flash files in about:plugins. When both are listed as enabled, Google Chrome uses the built-in version by default, so you shouldn’t have to specify which one to use unless you specifically want Chrome to use the system version instead (has ‘NPSWF32.dll’ in the location field). Keep in mind that if you use the system version, you’re responsible for keeping Flash updated while the built-in version will update automatically via Chrome’s auto-update mechanism.

If multiple Flash plugins are enabled and the native plugin is one of them, then that plugin is used to display Flash contents in the Google Chrome web browser. This does not explain why a second Flash plugin is enabled in the browser, as it does not make sense if the native Flash plugin is always used if active.

My suggestion would be to disable the non-native Flash plugin in Chrome to be on the safe side.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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