Although Chrome's source code suggested Google use reverse-engineering to figure out how to employ a Windows Vista security feature, the company claims that it did not go that route:

The Chrome source code said a particular security feature available on Vista, Data Execution Prevention, can be used on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1, though it's not documented for the older operating systems. The source code also said the feature can be understood with a disassembler, a method of reverse-engineering that deconstructs a binary file--such as Windows--into instructions more easily understood by a human. An explanatory comment in the Chrome source code mentions use of a disassembler to figure out the security feature. "Completely undocumented from Microsoft. You can find this information by disassembling Vista's SP1 kernel32.dll with your favorite disassembler," the comment says. But Google itself didn't take that route. "We did not disassemble this code," the company said in a statement. "The source code indicates that the technique came from here. Please also note that...disassembling is just one of several methods one can use to find this information."