How Google Chrome’s Password Checkup Extension Works

[Marilu Lukaszewski]

Early in 2019, Google introduced Password Checkup to warn of breached third-party logins. Originally a Chrome extension, the tool was integrated into its online password manager and later the browser itself. Next month, Google will sunset the dedicated Password Checkup Chrome extension.

How Google Chromes Password Checkup Extension Works

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In October of last year, Password Checkup was integrated with the Google Account Password Manager, which also warns about reuse and weak credentials. Visiting passwords.google.com lets you run the tool, while Chrome 78 integrated the remaining, at sign-in extension functionality directly.

Google's password checking feature has slowly been spreading across the Google ecosystem this past year. It started as the "Password Checkup" extension for desktop versions of Chrome, which would audit individual passwords when you entered them, and several months later it was integrated into every Google account as an on-demand audit you can run on all your saved passwords. Now, instead of a Chrome extension, Password Checkup is being integrated into the desktop and mobile versions of Chrome 79.

Data breaches that compromise people's usernames and passwords have become so common, and used in crime for so long, that millions of stolen credential pairs have actually become practically worthless to criminals, circulating online for free. And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the more current credentials sold on the black market. All of this means that it's increasingly difficult to keep track of which of your passwords you need to change. So Google has devised a Chrome extension to watch your back.

The password checkup feature, first released as a Chrome extension in February, cross references user passwords with the 4 billion username and password combos that Google said it knows have been breached.

Today, on Safer Internet Day, Google has released a new Chrome extension named "Password Checkup" that checks if usernames and password combinations entered in login forms have been leaked online during past data breaches and security incidents.

The extension works every time users log into an online service. The extension takes the username and password entered in the login form and checks them against a database of over four billion credentials that Google engineers have collected from public breaches in the past few years.

But under the hood, the two services are very different. Firefox Monitor works by showing a one-time alert when users navigate to a website that has been breached in the previous 12 months and politely asks users to consider changing passwords.

This means the extension won't show alerts when users use simple passwords such as "123456," but only when both the username and password have been found together, as a combo, in previously leaked data. Google said the reason it doesn't alert users when they use simple or previously leaked passwords is because they were trying to avoid an alert/popup fatigue that may have led to users ignoring the alerts altogether.

The reason behind this extension's creation is that threat actor groups are using username and password combos from old leaks to launch credential stuffing attacks, attempting to gain access to other online accounts where users have reused their old username and password combos.

For details about the cryptography that the extension uses to safeguard the usernames and passwords entered in login forms from both Google and third-party attackers, please have a look at the official Google announcement.

The Password Checkup feature is based on an eponymously named Chrome extension that Google launched in February, which allowed users to test their locally saved Chrome passwords for any leaked credentials.

Password Checkup is Google's new Chrome extension that detects if a username and password on a site have been compromised. If they have, the extension will warn the user and suggest they change their password.

Google has a partial solution. On Safer Internet Day, Google released a Chrome browser extension called Password Checkup that checks to see if any of your recently used passwords were detected in a data breach.

The tool is a Chrome browser extension, and works by informing the user if one of the username/password combinations that they regularly use turns up in its list of compromised data, which is states amounts to over 4 billion credentials.

OneLogin, a unified access management vendor, today introduced Shield, a browser extension intended to fight password reuse, weak password practices and phishing. The software is available in both free and enterprise plans and through Google Chrome browser.

Shield is a browser extension available through Google Chrome; it works with any existing identity provider and offers users a free or enterprise plan. The enterprise version of Shield offers more functionalities such as the ability to alert administrators or suspend user accounts if the software identifies threats and the ability to export intelligence to security information and event management tools for further reporting and analysis.

Google offers its own password protection extensions called Password Alert and Password Checkup. Password Alert notifies users if they enter their Google Account password into any site other than Google's sign-in page. However, it does not protect passwords for non-Google services. The Password Checkup extension promises to help users resecure accounts affected by data breaches. According to Google, the extension alerts users if they enter a username and password that is no longer safe because it appears in a data breach known to the company.

The Google-Harris Poll survey found that 66% of respondents used the same passwords for multiple accounts, leaving them vulnerable to potential attacks. The Password Checkup extension would notify people by automatically checking if a person's credentials were exposed in other hacks, something that Google's smart home unit, Nest, also does, as do Netflix and Facebook.

In the last eight months, more than 1 million people downloaded Google's extension, and it scans about 10 million passwords a month, Risher said. The company uses a cryptography technique called blinding so it can compare your passwords with a database of passwords leaked in public breaches, without viewing them.

Now people won't have to download an extension for the security notification. The Password Checkup tool will be added to Google's Password Manager, and checks all your saved passwords for security issues, the company said.

It won't be an automatic checkup -- so you'll still have to use the tool every time a new breach is announced. When it's integrated into Chrome browsers in December, it'll flag vulnerable passwords only when you sign in to accounts. Risher said Google could have Password Checkup be an automatic tool in the future.

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The web can be a dangerous place. With the constant threats of phishing or malware, you never can be certain if your important sign-in information is breached. That is why as part of Safer Internet Day on Tuesday, February 5, Google launched a new Chrome extension which will make sure your passwords are always protected and secure.

The latest extension, known as Password Checkup is available as a free download on the Chrome Web Store. It builds on an existing ability that automatically resets your Google password if it was determined to be part of a third-party data breach. Once installed, the extension scans a database of 4 billion compromised passwords and will alert you with a red dialog box and warning in the address bar if you need to change one or multiple of your passwords. The extension will not otherwise alert you to other compromised information such as a mailing address or phone number. Google says this is to ensure that these alerts remain actionable and not informational.

Privacy might be a concern, but Google claims that no one can learn the account or login details if you happen to use this extension. It notes it has leveraged privacy-protecting techniques with the help of cryptography researchers at both Google and Stanford University. That includes a four-step process, where the most important step involves storing an anonymous hashed version of passwords.

The extension was made by Google and is very easy to use. Once you install it, it will check whether your password's safe to use every time you log into a website. If not, you'll get a message that one ore more of your passwords are no longer safe due to a data breach, and you'll be prompted to change them.

Your passwords are never seen by Google (the company only stores a hashed, partial code for unsafe passwords in your Chrome browser), and Google claims the extension "never reports any identifying information about your accounts, passwords, or device."

While simple, the extension is an important tool that everyone who's mindful about online security and privacy should use. Using passwords that have been compromised is a time bomb waiting to go off, and this is a pretty secure way to check whether you have any of those. And even though it's not the first tool of its type -- The HaveIBeenPwned site comes to mind -- the Google credentials behind it do make it a little easier to recommend.

Yesterday was Safer Internet Day, and to mark the occasion Google launched a couple of new tools to enhance you and your data's safety. The headlining introduction was of the Password Checkup Chrome extension which checks and alerts users if any of their username/passwords have features in one of the many huge third party data breaches. Secondly, Google launched Cross Account Protection tools which extend the Google ecosystem's account hijacking and breach notices to apps that utilise Google Sign In.

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