Google Now Offers ‘Software Removal Tool’ For Chrome Malware

Over the last few years, Google has taken progressively sterner steps to keep Chrome, its free-to-download web browser, a bastion of internet security. The most recent step was to lock down extensions, preventing those not sourced from the Chrome Web Store from being installed without jumping through various hoops. Now Google is offering a “Software Removal Tool” to purge unwanted nasties from the browser.

Much like Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool, Google’s SRT is a minimal affair. Once downloaded and executed, you’ll be presented with a dialog box informing you of any discoveries or, in my case, nothing untoward. As Martin Brinkmann notes on gHacks, the tool is for Chrome only and not those based on the browser’s open-source foundation Chromium — for example Opera.

You might be wondering why Chrome needs an external program to clean itself, when you could just uninstall and reinstall the browser. Malicious add-ons and extensions have a habit of storing themselves out-of-reach of the normal mechanisms you might use to get rid of unwanted applications — sometimes, you need a targeted solution.

If you want more details about how the SRT works, hit up Google’s product forums.

Software Removal Tool [Google, via gHacks]


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