Browser extensions, while offering valuable functionalities, can seem risky to organizations. One major concern is the potential for security vulnerabilities. Poorly designed or malicious extensions could compromise data integrity and expose sensitive information to unauthorized access. Moreover, certain extensions may introduce performance issues or conflicts with other software, leading to system instability. Therefore, many organizations find it crucial to have visibility into the usage of extensions and the ability to control them. Chrome browser offers these extension management capabilities and reporting via Chrome Browser Cloud Management. In this blog post, we will walk you through how to utilize these features to keep your data and users safe.

Visibility into Extensions being used in your environment

Having visibility into what and how extensions are being used enables IT and security teams to assess potential security implications, ensure compliance with organizational policies, and mitigate potential risks. There are three ways you can get critical information about extensions in your organization:

1. App and extension usage reporting

Organizations can gain visibility into every Chrome extension that is installed across an enterprise’s fleet in Chrome App and Extension Usage Reporting.

2. Extension Risk Assessment

CRXcavator and Spin.AI Risk Assessment are tools used to assess the risks of browser extensions and minimize the risks associated with them. We are making extension scores via these two platforms available directly in Chrome Browser Cloud Management, so security teams can have an at-a-glance view of risk scores of the extensions being used in their browser environment.

3. Extension event reporting

Extension installs events are now available to alert IT and security teams of new extension usage in their environment.

Organizations can send critical browser security events to their chosen solution providers, such as Splunk, Crowdstrike, Palo Alto Networks, and Google solutions, including Chronicle, Cloud PubSub, and Google Workspace, for further analysis. You can also view the event logs directly in Chrome Browser Cloud Management.

Extension controls for added security

By having control over extensions, organizations can maintain a secure and stable browsing environment, safeguard sensitive data, and protect their overall digital infrastructure. There are several ways IT and security teams can set and enforce controls over extensions:

1. Extension permission

Organizations can control whether users can install apps or extensions based on the information an extension can access—also known as permissions. For example, you might want to prevent users from installing any extension that wants permission to see a device location.

2. Extension workflow

Extension workflow allows end users to request extensions for review. From there, IT can either approve or deny them. This is a great approach for teams that want to control the extensions in their environment, but allow end users to have some say over the extensions they use.

We recently added a prompt for business justification for documenting why users are requesting the extension. This gives admins more information as to why the extension may or may not be helpful for their workforce, and can help speed approvals for business users.

3. Force install/block extensions

In the requests tab, you can select a requested extension, and approve that extension request and force install it, so the extension shows up automatically on all the managed browsers in that specific Organizational Unit or group.

Admins also have the ability to block extensions in their browser environment.

4. Extension version pinning

Admins have the ability to pin extensions to specific versions. As a result, the pinned extensions will not be upgraded unless the admin explicitly changes the version. This gives organizations the ability to evaluate new extension versions before they decide to allow them in their environment.

Extensions play a huge role in user productivity for many organizations, and Chrome is committed to help enterprises securely take advantage of them. If you haven’t already, you can sign up for Chrome Browser Cloud Management and start managing extensions being used in your organizations at no additional cost.

If you’re already using Chrome Browser Cloud Management, but want to see how you can get the most out of it, check out our newly released Beyond Browsing demo series where Chrome experts share demos on some of our frequently asked management questions.

For 13 years, a key pillar of the Chrome Security ecosystem has included encouraging security researchers to find security vulnerabilities in Chrome browser and report them to us, through the Chrome Vulnerability Rewards Program.

Starting today and until 1 December 2023, the first security bug report we receive with a functional full chain exploit, resulting in a Chrome sandbox escape, is eligible for triple the full reward amount. Your full chain exploit could result in a reward up to $180,000 (potentially more with other bonuses).

Any subsequent full chains submitted during this time are eligible for double the full reward amount!

We have historically put a premium on reports with exploits – “high quality reports with a functional exploit” is the highest tier of reward amounts in our Vulnerability Rewards Program. Over the years, the threat model of Chrome browser has evolved as features have matured and new features and new mitigations, such a MiraclePtr, have been introduced. Given these evolutions, we’re always interested in explorations of new and novel approaches to fully exploit Chrome browser and we want to provide opportunities to better incentivize this type of research. These exploits provide us valuable insight into the potential attack vectors for exploiting Chrome, and allow us to identify strategies for better hardening specific Chrome features and ideas for future broad-scale mitigation strategies.

The full details of this bonus opportunity are available on the Chrome VRP rules and rewards page. The summary is as follows:

• The bug reports may be submitted in advance while exploit development continues during this 180-day window. The functional exploits must be submitted to Chrome by the end of the 180-day window to be eligible for the triple or double reward.
  • The first functional full chain exploit we receive is eligible for the triple reward amount.
• The full chain exploit must result in a Chrome browser sandbox escape, with a demonstration of attacker control / code execution outside of the sandbox.
• Exploitation must be able to be performed remotely and no or very limited reliance on user interaction.
• The exploit must have been functional in an active release channel of Chrome (Dev, Beta, Stable, Extended Stable) at the time of the initial reports of the bugs in that chain. Please do not submit exploits developed from publicly disclosed security bugs or other artifacts in old, past versions of Chrome.

As is consistent with our general rewards policy, if the exploit allows for remote code execution (RCE) in the browser or other highly-privileged process, such as network or GPU process, to result in a sandbox escape without the need of a first stage bug, the reward amount for renderer RCE “high quality report with functional exploit” would be granted and included in the calculation of the bonus reward total.

Based on our current Chrome VRP reward matrix, your full chain exploit could result in a total reward of over $165,000 -$180,000 for the first full chain exploit and over $110,000 - $120,000 for subsequent full chain exploits we receive in the six month window of this reward opportunity.

We’d like to thank our entire Chrome researcher community for your past and ongoing efforts and security bug submissions! You’ve truly helped us make Chrome more secure for all users.

Happy Hunting!

Introduction

Chrome is trusted by millions of business users as a secure enterprise browser. Organizations can use Chrome Browser Cloud Management to help manage Chrome browsers more effectively. As an admin, they can use the Google Admin console to get Chrome to report critical security events to third-party service providers such as Splunk® to create custom enterprise security remediation workflows.

Security remediation is the process of responding to security events that have been triggered by a system or a user. Remediation can be done manually or automatically, and it is an important part of an enterprise security program.

Why is Automated Security Remediation Important?

When a security event is identified, it is imperative to respond as soon as possible to prevent data exfiltration and to prevent the attacker from gaining a foothold in the enterprise. Organizations with mature security processes utilize automated remediation to improve the security posture by reducing the time it takes to respond to security events. This allows the usually over burdened Security Operations Center (SOC) teams to avoid alert fatigue.

Automated Security Remediation using Chrome Browser Cloud Management and Splunk

Chrome integrates with Chrome Enterprise Recommended partners such as Splunk® using Chrome Enterprise Connectors to report security events such as malware transfer, unsafe site visits, password reuse. Other supported events can be found on our support page.

The Splunk integration with Chrome browser allows organizations to collect, analyze, and extract insights from security events. The extended security insights into managed browsers will enable SOC teams to perform better informed automated security remediations using Splunk® Alert Actions.

Splunk Alert Actions are a great capability for automating security remediation tasks. By creating alert actions, enterprises can automate the process of identifying, prioritizing, and remediating security threats.

In Splunk®, SOC teams can use alerts to monitor for and respond to specific Chrome Browser Cloud Management events. Alerts use a saved search to look for events in real time or on a schedule and can trigger an Alert Action when search results meet specific conditions as outlined in the diagram below.

Use Case

If a user downloads a malicious file after bypassing a Chrome “Dangerous File” message their managed browser/managed CrOS device should be quarantined.

Prerequisites

• Create a Chrome Browser Cloud Management account at no additional costs
• Splunk® Enterprise v9.0.* or Splunk® Cloud Platform (Cost: Please refer to Splunk’s website)
• Understanding of the Splunk alerting workflow
• Understanding of how to create custom alert actions in Splunk®.

Setup

1. Install the Google Chrome Add-on for Splunk App

   Please follow installation instructions here depending on your Splunk Installation to install the Google Chrome Add-on for Splunk App.

2. Setting up Chrome Browser Cloud Management and Splunk Integration

   Please follow the guide here to set up Chrome Browser Cloud Management and Splunk® integration.

3. Setting up Chrome Browser Cloud Management API access

   To call the Chrome Browser Cloud Management API, use a service account properly configured in the Google admin console. Create a (or use an existing) service account and download the JSON representation of the key.

   Create a (or use an existing) role in the admin console with all the “Chrome Management” privileges as shown below.

   

   Assign the created role to the service account using the “Assign service accounts” button.
   

   
4. Setting up Chrome Browser Cloud Management App in Splunk®

   Install the App i.e. Alert Action from our Github page. You will notice that the Splunk App uses the below directory structure. Please take some time to understand the directory structure layout.

   
5. Setting up a Quarantine OU in Chrome Browser Cloud Management

   Create a “Quarantine” OU to move managed browsers into. Apply restrictive policies to this OU which will then be applied to managed browsers and managed CrOS devices that are moved to this OU. In our case we set the below policies for our “Quarantine” OU called Investigate.These policies ensure that the quarantined CrOS device/browser can only open a limited set of approved URLS.

   • URL Blocklist - Block access to all URLs
   • URL Allowlist - Allow only approved URLs for e.g. IT Helpdesk website
   • New Tab Page Location - Set New tab page URL to an internal website asking the user to contact IT Helpdesk.
   • Home Page is New Tab Page - Use the New Tab page as the user's homepage.

Configuration

1. Start with a search for the Chrome Browser Cloud Management events in the Google Chrome Add-on for Splunk App. For our instance we used the below search query to search for known malicious file download events.

2. Save the search as an alert. The alert uses the saved search to check for events. Adjust the alert type to configure how often the search runs. Use a scheduled alert to check for events on a regular basis. Use a real-time alert to monitor for events continuously. An alert does not have to trigger every time it generates search results. Set trigger conditions to manage when the alert triggers. Customize the alert settings as per enterprise security policies. For our example we used a real time alert with a per-result trigger. The setup we used is as shown below.



As seen in the screenshot we have configured the Chrome Browser Cloud Management Remediation Alert Action App with

• The OU Path of the Quarantine OU i.e. /Investigate
• The Customer Id of the workspace domain
• Service Account Key JSON value

Test the setup

Use the testsafebrowsing website to generate sample security events to test the setup.

1. Open the testsafebrowsing website
2. Click the link for line item 4 under the Desktop Download Warnings section i.e. “Should show an "uncommon" warning, for .exe”
3. You will see a Dangerous Download blocked warning giving you two options to either Discard or Keep the downloaded file. Click on Keep
4. This will trigger the alert action and move your managed browser or managed CrOS device to the “Quarantine” OU (OU name Investigate in our example) with restricted policies.

Conclusion

Security remediation is vital to any organization’s security program. In this blog we discussed configuring automated security remediation of Chrome Browser Cloud Management security events using Splunk alert actions. This scalable approach can be used to protect a company from online security threats by detecting and quickly responding to high fidelity Chrome Browser Cloud Management security events thereby greatly reducing the time to respond.

Our team will be at the Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit in National Harbor, MD, next week. Come see us in action if you’re attending the summit.

Source: Google Online Security Blog