Google Chrome will now consume 10 to 13% more RAM memory, announced the research giant. Already pointed out for its high resource consumption, the Web browser empires its case... but it has a good excuse! The increase in RAM consumption is due to a new feature supposed to protect you from hackers
"We are delighted to announce that Chrome 67 is now equipped with a new security feature called Site Isolation on Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS" explains Google on his blog. In testing since iteration 63, this additional security allows Google Chrome to protect itself from the famous Spectre and Meltdown flaws, discovered at the beginning of 2018, ensures the company.
The site isolation feature completely changes the internal function of the Web browser. As of today, Google Chrome no longer allows an attacker to read all the codes (IFRAMEs or pop-ups for example) when you decide to open a site. Now the browser will rather isolate the process from each site. A hacker who uses the Spectre vulnerability to intrude into your computer will no longer have access to the same amount of data. Only data accessed at the time of your machine may be compromised.
This isolation system requires a large amount of RAM to work, warns Google. However, the function "should not cause any visible changes for most users or WEB developers." A rise in consumption of 10 to 13% of RAM remains to be feared. The change could still be felt on computers that are content with 4GB of RAM.
Google ensures that this over-consumption is not a fatality. In the coming months, the net giant will improve its isolation system by analyzing the collected data. "Site isolation will be offered on Android with Chrome 68", says Google.