Google has long touted the speed of Chrome, most recently tying the Year of the Rabbit in to its announcement of a Chrome beta. Today, the stable version of the browser is being released.

Google says the speed boost correspondents to a 66% improvement in JavaScript performance in benchmark tests.

But speed isn’t just the “pure brawn” under the hood, says Google, and the new interface in this most recent version of Chrome is meant to help the user move more quickly as well, particularly when it comes to changing settings. The settings interface now takes up its own tab in the browser, and there’s a new search box so you can quickly find what you’re looking to manage.

Chrome speed benchmarks

The new Chrome also lets you synchronize your passwords across the various computers you use. You can encrypt these for additional security. To enable this feature, visit the “Personal Stuff” section in Chrome’s settings.

Google has also extended Chrome’s sandboxing to the browser’s integrated Flash Player, which will help protect you against malicious webpages.

You can download the latest version here, or if you’re already using Chrome, you’ll be automatically updated soon. Also be sure to check out these two YouTube videos that describe both the new settings menu as well as what exactly “sandboxing” is.

For years, ads pimping malware disguised as legitimate antivirus programs have gone to great lengths to mimic the look and feel of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser and Windows operating system. Now Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari are getting the same treatment.

A security researcher from Zscaler has recently uncovered a campaign that’s tailored to the browser that the intended victim is using. Those with IE will see the same tired graphic depicting a Windows 7 security alert, but look what happens when the visitor is using Firefox.

Fake Warning in Firefox

Not only does the image contain internal Firefox elements in the source code, it also spoofs the security warning the browser shows when users attempt to navigate to an address known to be malicious, said Julien Sobrier, a senior security researcher at Zscaler.

When the intended mark visits the page with Chrome, the ruse looks altogether different. The first screen shows a warning window bearing the browser’s distinctive logo and the words “Chrome Security has found critical process activity on your system and will perform fast scan of system files.”

Fake Google Chrome warning

The user then sees what purports to be a Chrome window showing a virus scan.

Fake scan in Google Chrome

Not to be left out, Safari is also spoofed, although with significantly less effort. The initial warning looks like this:

Fake Safari warning

But the scan page defaults to the look and feel of IE.

The ads are an attempt to trick visitors into believing they have infections that can be cured by the software being offered in the ad. By customizing the screens to the browser, it stands to reason, malware mongers stand a better chance of succeeding.

“I’ve seen malicious pages tailored in the past, but they were mostly fake Flash updates or fake codec upgrades for Internet Explorer and Firefox,” Sobrier said. “I’ve never seen targeted fake AV pages for so many different browsers.”

Some of the sites that redirect to the scam include columbia.faircitynews.com, www.troop391.org, jmvcorp.com. When successful, the redirected page pushes the file InstallInternetDefender_xxx.exe, where “xxx” is a number that changes frequently. At time of writing, it was detected as malicious by just 9.5 percent of the major (legitimate) AV packages, according to a VirusTotal scan.

No doubt, many readers are savvy enough to spot scams like this, but what about poor Aunt Mildred, who has being told by a well-meaning relative to never, ever use the heavily targeted IE? Makes you realize why fake AV can be such a huge revenue generator.

Sobrier, who blogged about his findings here, first spotted the customized ads on Monday.

Ever since it became stable enough to use on a day-to-day basis on a Mac last year, Google Chrome has been my browser of choice. Other browsers have been adding some nice features — but Chrome keeps adding them faster. And today on its second birthday, that rate of change isn’t slowing down.

Google has officially rolled out Chrome 6 as the latest stable version of the browser today. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone using the dev or beta builds of the browser, but it’s nonetheless an important mark as it means it’s stable enough for mass consumption.

Remember that it was just two years ago when Google surprised the world by announcing a new browser (a little early) via a comic. The next day, we got the first shots of what the browser would look like — and it was released as a beta for Windows users. It actually looks pretty much the same today, but it’s now much, much faster (and when it launched it was already faster than most browsers out there).

Google says that Chrome today is a full three times faster when it comes to JavaScript performance versus Chrome circa 2008. The rapid speed increases have also undoubtedly pushed rival browsers to become faster, so we’ve all benefited.

Arguably more important to me is that despite adding all the new features – and extensions — Chrome still seems lightweight today. I fondly remember the good old days of 2004 when I first started using Firefox as my main browser and thinking how fresh and lightweight it felt compared to the atrocity that was IE. Firefox, sadly, got bloated over the years. So far, Chrome hasn’t put on the same weight. Here’s hoping it never does.

As I said, Chrome is also showing no signs of slowing down from a development standpoint. The browser is already in the process of morphing into version 7 as well. Chromium, the open source browser that Chrome is based on, has been hit version 7 a couple weeks ago — and the dev build of Chrome just went 7 as well. Google has said they hope to iterate every six weeks going forward.

These next few months are going to be arguably the most interesting times for the browser yet. The Chrome Web Store will soon open, bringing tightly integrated web-based apps into the browser. And then, of course, Chrome OS is due before the end of the year.

Happy birthday Chrome.

Since Google Chrome’s release in September of 2008, Mac and Linux users have been playing catchup with Windows users for features and stable releases. As of Today, all three versions of Chrome are now officially stable as the Mac and Linux versions have shed their beta labels for a faster version of Chrome with new features. According to the official Google Chrome blog, the new universally stable release also includes a handful of new HTML5 and syncing features.

Previously only bookmarks could be synced across various machines, but with this latest release, users will now be able to port their preferences – including zoom defaults, themes and homepage settings – to the various computers they browse from. By associating browser settings with a Google account, users can quickly sync the settings on their various installations of Chrome.

Additionally, this newest version of Chrome now supports some fancy new HTML5 features, including geolocation APIs, and drag-and-drop functionality. Beta release testers of Chrome may have already spotted the ability to use Google Maps’ location functions, as well as drag-and-drop of attachments from within Gmail.

Chrome Benchmark Results

According to Google, today’s release of Chrome is the fastest ever, improving “by 213 percent and 305 percent in Javascript performance by the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks” since its initial beta release. Google is also working with Adobe to fully integrate Flash into the browser with new plug-in APIs, but this will not be available until the next full release of Flash Player in the near future.