Published April 23, 2022
Author: Ash Khan

Microsoft Defender is flagging Google Chrome updates as potentially harming, should Chrome users be alarmed?  

Windows built-in security system called ATP flagged recent chrome updates as suspicious. These updates were delivered through Google and were marked as suspicious.  

There is a possibility this could all be chalked down as false positive. If this is a real threat it could be a joint issue for Microsoft and Google users as both software giants share users. 

False-positive 

The affected users were seeing a warning “multi-stage incident involving Execution & Defense evasion”. 

While the company claims these warnings are thoroughly investigated and are termed as false positives due to a clash of alerts. The company received a false alarm for Chrome updates from Microsoft Defender. 

Microsoft claims the issue has been resolved and users can use Defender without any points for concern. 

After these warning alerts started showing up online, the company issued a Defender service advisory and clearly stated that these false positives are not due to any suspicious or malicious activity. 

This is not an isolated incident. Microsoft admins have dealt with false-positive issues previously for two years.  

Last year in December Defender blocked Office Users to open files and launched several applications claiming as malware.  

Similarly in March Defender flagged Microsoft Office updates as ransomware threats. Microsoft confirmed it as a false alarm after an investigation.  

On the other hand, Google Chrome has faced various security concerns recently high severity zero-day vulnerability that allowed remote code execution. 

At this point… 

It’s pretty clear that both the companies have their hands full Microsoft with Defender false positives and Google with malware threats.  

These companies are expanding at a great speed and these systemic issues wherever they originate from or whatever is causing them are jeopardizing their clienteles’ trust and patience. They should focus more on working together and fixing these issues