Google Chrome will not launch with admin rights anymore, to reduce security risks

Google is making an important change to Chrome on Windows. The browser will no longer run with administrator privileges by default.

This change is designed with the intent to protect users from potentially malicious threats. As Bleeping Computer explains, when Chrome runs with administrator rights, any file that you download can pose a security risk. What that means is a malicious file that a user downloads could run with full system access, and in turn jeopardize the operating system.

Microsoft Edge has a feature which was introduced in 2019 that prevents it from launching with elevated privileges. Edge displays a pop-up warning to inform users that the browser is running with admin rights. It will automatically try to relaunch itself without elevated privileges. Microsoft engineer, Stefan Smolen, had submitted a commit to the Chromium source code to implement a similar automatic de-elevation system in Google Chrome on Windows.

Smolen's commit explains "This automatically attempts a relaunch once, and then if it still fails, it falls back to the current behavior." There is a command-line switch to prevent auto-relaunch if, just in case the browser launches with admin rights again.

However, this feature will not block Chrome processes that are running in automation mode, to not interfere with automation tools that are used by companies or developers. The commit has already been approved and merged by the Chromium developer team.

Smolen also advised that running a browser in admin mode is not a good idea. That is good advice, and blocking the browser to run with admin rights might be a crucial way to enhance the security of users, as it could also reduce the risks of malicious extensions gaining access to sensitive data.