Unless you've been locked away in a dungeon for the past few weeks, you should be aware that Google released its first web browser, Google Chrome. While I was cruising around the office the day of its release, I noticed that some of our users had installed and were using this web browser, violating corporate policy. By default, our users don’t have permissions to write to the restricted areas that most applications write to when they're installed, so it's our policy to have administrators install applications for users.
I decided to investigate how these users were able to install Google Chrome. My initial investigation revealed that the browser is designed to bypass restricted write areas and install into C:\Users\%username% in Windows Vista and C:\Documents and Settings\%username% in Windows XP. Because standard users can write to these areas, they're able to install the browser without Admin rights.
After installing Google Chrome on my Vista machine, I found that browser installed a setup file named chromesetup.exe, an executable named chrome.exe, and Windows Installer file named gears-chrome-opt.msi in the C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application folder. (In XP, the folder is C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application.) Armed with this information, I successfully created a software restriction policy named Block Google Chrome to disallow these three files.
Here's how you can create the Block Google Chrome software restriction policy for your Vista or XP machines:
With the Block Google Chrome software restriction policy, you can stop users from installing and using Google's new web browser without IT's consent. (Note that if you want some users to be able to install and run the browser, you can filter the GPO so that it won't affect them.) You can even adapt these steps to block other applications that install to user-accessible areas in the OS and registry.
—Steve Di Bias, systems administrator, Las Vegas Convention Center
Learn more from "Google Chrome Becomes Number Three Browser" and "Could Chrome Be the Next IE?"