Chrome Limits Websites’ Direct Access to Private Networks for Security Reasons

Chrome limita el acceso directo de los sitios web a redes privadas por razones de seguridad News

Google Chrome announced plans to block public websites accessing private network endpoints as part of a major security overhaul to protect against intrusions through the browser.

The proposed change is set to be rolled out in two phases consisting of releases Chrome 98 and Chrome 101 scheduled in the coming months via a newly implemented W3C specification called private network access (PNA).

“Chrome will start sending a CORS preflight request ahead of any private network request for a subresource, which asks for explicit permission from the target server,” Titouan Rigoudy and Eiji Kitamura said. “This preflight request will carry a new header, Access-Control-Request-Private-Network: true, and the response to it must carry a corresponding header, Access-Control-Allow-Private-Network: true. “

What this means is that starting with Chrome version 101, any website accessible via the internet will be made to seek explicit permission from the browser before they can access internal network resources. The new PNA specification allows websites to request connections from servers behind their local networks.

“The specification also extends the Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) protocol so that websites now have to explicitly request a grant from servers on private networks before being allowed to send arbitrary requests,” Rigoudy noted in August 2021, when Google first announced plans to deprecate access to private network endpoints from non-secure websites.

The goal, the researchers said, is to safeguard users from cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks targeting routers and other devices on private networks, which enable bad actors to reroute unsuspecting users to malicious domains.

It’s not just Chrome. Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser has added a new browsing mode to the Beta channel (Version 98.0.1108. 23) that aims to bring an added layer of security to mitigate future in-the-wild exploitation of unknown zero-day vulnerabilities.

“This feature is a huge step forward because it lets us mitigate unforeseen active zero days (based on historical trends),” Microsoft said. This feature provides Hardware-enforced Stack Protection (ACG), Content Flow Guard(CFG), and Arbitrary Code Guards (ACG) to support users’ web security. “

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