While security fixes are always a major hallmark of a new stable Chrome release, so too are new features.
With Chrome 12, Google is extending its Safe Browsing technology to downloads. Safe Browsing has been available as a phishing website detection technology since at least 2006 when it was first included in Firefox 2.0
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Back in April when Chrome 12 first debuted as a developer release, Ian Fette, senior product manager at Google told InternetNews.com that Safe Browsing in Chrome 12 goes beyond simple phishing site detection.
“A separate attack vector exists, which is a social engineering mechanism that attempts to convince a user to download and run a file,” Fette said at the time. “This new feature is designed to protect against the latter type of attack, where a user is convinced to download and run a harmful file.”