Chrome 146 & DBSC: The End of Cookie Stealing as We Know It?
Google just pushed DBSC (Device Bound Session Credentials) to general availability in Chrome 146 for Windows. For those who haven't been tracking the beta, this effectively binds session cookies to the specific device. If an infostealer dumps the Cookies SQLite database and tries to replay it on another machine, it’s useless.
This forces attackers to move from simple file scraping to more complex in-memory hooks or token manipulation. To check if your endpoints are ready, I whipped up a quick version check script:
# Check Chrome Version for DBSC Support (v146+)
$regPath = "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Google\Update\Clients\{8A69D345-D564-463C-AFF1-A69D9E530F96}"
if (Test-Path $regPath) {
$pv = (Get-ItemProperty $regPath).pv
Write-Host "Detected Chrome Version: $pv"
$majorVersion = [int]$pv.Split('.')[0]
if ($majorVersion -ge 146) {
Write-Host "Device Bound Session Credentials supported." -ForegroundColor Green
} else {
Write-Host "Update required for DBSC." -ForegroundColor Yellow
}
}
The big question: Does this force the malware ecosystem back toward BYOVD (Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver) to bypass these protections, or will we see a surge in malicious extensions? Curious how others are planning to test the resilience of this against tools like RedLine.
This is a huge win for defense. We've seen a massive drop in successful session hijacks in our test environment where we enabled the beta. However, I'm already seeing indicators that threat actors are pivoting to chrome_remote_debugging attacks to bypass this. We've updated our detection logic to flag when Chrome spawns with debug ports:
DeviceProcessEvents
| where FileName == "chrome.exe"
| where ProcessCommandLine contains "remote-debugging-port"
If they can't steal the file, they'll just control the browser.
Solid move by Google, but I'm frustrated the macOS support is lagging behind. We manage a mixed fleet and our MacOS users are arguably the higher-value targets for APTs. Until the macOS rollout lands in the next release, we are still relying on heavy restrictions on DeveloperTools access via configuration profiles to mitigate the gap.
I wonder if this impacts legitimate pentesting tools? We often use cookie exports for persistence during assessments. I guess we'll have to rely more on token theft from memory or extension hijacking now. It definitely raises the bar for skiddies running Lumma Stealer, but sophisticated groups will adapt quickly.
This shift definitely raises the bar for commodity malware, forcing them into noisier memory operations. While the server-side opt-in is a prerequisite, validating your client policy enforcement is key. Here’s a quick PowerShell snippet to verify the DBSC policy state across your endpoints:
Get-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome" -Name "DeviceBoundSessionCredentialsEnabled" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
This definitely pushes attackers toward in-memory tactics. To adapt your blue team monitoring, you should start hunting for suspicious process handles targeting the Chrome renderer process. Attackers will likely use OpenProcess to read memory.
You can use this PowerShell snippet (requiring admin rights) to scan for processes with unusual access rights to Chrome:
Get-Process chrome | ForEach-Object {
(Get-Process -Id $_.Id -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue).Handles
}
It’s basic, but establishing a baseline of 'normal' handle counts now will help spot anomalies later.
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