Chrome 142.0.7444.60 is triggering extension download API differently.

[Vishal Jaiswal]

Hi Chromium Team,

We are Trellix Endpoint Security, one part of our product is Web Control, where we assign ratings to URLs and downloaded files from the browser, and also give users the option to allow or block visited URLs or downloaded files through a prompt. We achieve this through a browser extension that communicates with an application on the same machine via native messaging host.

After the recent Chrome upgrade to version 142.0.7444.60, our customers have been seeing a large number of unexpected Trellix Web Control prompts asking them to allow or block downloaded files. Surprisingly, these files were downloaded long back by the end user.

In earlier versions of chrome, we were only getting callback for the active download but in 142 version it looks to me that we are getting callback for all the downloads including the previous ones. Once we close the browser and re-open, again these warning prompts comes because the download callback is again getting hit for all the downloads made on the browser.

Since we rely on Chrome’s provided APIs to detect downloads in the browser, we suspect that something in the latest release may be triggering these APIs differently, as our product works correctly with earlier versions.

I kindly request the Chromium team to investigate this issue and suggest a way forward. This product is used by many organizations, and their employees are being affected by unnecessary prompts, impacting their daily work.

If there have been any architectural changes in the browser that extension developers need to accommodate, we are more than willing to make the necessary updates.

Thanks and regards,
Vishal