Here’s a 16-character spell that can crash your Google Chrome
Although this is not security threat, but it may be misused to impact many Chrome users
In a recent finding, typing in a particular 16-character link in Google chrome can crash your browser. Infact, hovering your cursor over the link can crash your browser tab as well.
The bug was first discovered by a blogger named Andris Atteka, who wrote on his blog how the Google Chrome can be tripped simply by typing a null character in the URL string. The link he gave consisted of 26-characters.
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VentureBeat, on the other hand, has managed to shed 10 characters from it to make a simpler string. To try it yourself, fire up your Chrome and put this in your search bar: http://a/%%30%30
Within 4-5 seconds your chrome would crash.
And if you hover your curson over the code Atteka has found, your Chrome tab will crash within the moment.
Atteka on his blog also explained the reason behind the browser crashing. He deciphered that “It seems to be crashing in some very old code. In the Debug build, it’s hitting a DCHECK on an invalid URL in GURL, deep in some History code. Given that it’s hitting a CHECK in the Release build, I don’t think this is actually a security bug, but I’m going to leave it as such.”
Although this is not security threat, but it may be misused to impact many Chrome users.