Nine months after first being put into testing, the new version of Chrome will at last included filtering against inadvertently downloading malware executables, Google has announced.

Reported as being on the browser's long list as long ago as April 2011, the version 17 beta includes the ability to relate known malicious websites detected using the software's Safe Browsing API, blocking downloads hosted on such domains.

The release notes mention only .exe and .msi files as being covered, but the developers offer hope that this will be extended over the course of 2012.

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