Security News

Microsoft's Patch Tuesday announcement was bad enough, with six in-the-wild vulnerabilities patched, including one buried in the vestiges of Internet Explorer's MSHTML web rendering code. It's been followed by Google's latest Chrome security advisory, which includes a zero-day patch to Chrome's JavaScript engine amongst its 14 officially listed security fixes.

Google this week released patches for 14 vulnerabilities in the Chrome browser, including a security flaw that has been exploited in the wild. "Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2021-30551 exists in the wild," the company said, without providing further technical details.

Attention readers, if you are using Google Chrome browser on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computers, you need to update it immediately to the latest version Google released earlier today. The internet services company has rolled out an urgent update to the browser to address 14 newly discovered security issues, including a zero-day flaw that it says is being actively exploited in the wild.

Google has released Chrome 91.0.4472.101 for Windows, Mac, and Linux to fix 14 security vulnerabilities, with one zero-day vulnerability exploited in the wild and tracked as CVE-2021-30551. Google Chrome 91.0.4472.101 has started rolling out worldwide and will become available to all users over the next few days.

Kaspersky security researchers discovered a new threat actor dubbed PuzzleMaker, who has used a chain of Google Chrome and Windows 10 zero-day exploits in highly-targeted attacks against multiple companies worldwide. The zero-day exploit chain deployed in the campaign used a remote code execution vulnerability in the Google Chrome V8 JavaScript engine to access the targeted systems.

Google on Thursday said it's rolling out new security features to Chrome browser aimed at detecting suspicious downloads and extensions via its Enhanced Safe Browsing feature, which it launched a year ago. Currently, 75% of all add-ons on the platform are compliant, the company pointed out, adding "Any extensions built by a developer who follows the Chrome Web Store Developer Program Policies, will be considered trusted by Enhanced Safe Browsing."

Google has added new protection capabilities for Enhanced Safe Browsing users in Chrome, warning them when installing untrusted extensions and allowing them to request more in-depth scans of downloaded files. The Safe Browsing feature, available in Google Chrome since 2007, warns you of dangerous events when visiting malicious websites by checking URLs against a list of unsafe sites stored within Chrome.

Google says the latest Google Chrome release comes with a significant performance boost due to newly added improvements to the open-source V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine. Google Chrome 91, which started rolling out earlier this week, is executing JavaScript code 23% faster with the inclusion of a new JavaScript compiler and the use of a new way to optimize the code's location in memory.

Google has added a new batch of Chrome Actions for early testing in the latest Google Chrome web browser releases before the feature's worldwide rollout later this year. Chrome Actions is a recently introduced experimental Chrome feature that allows you to type in a command, causing an action to be displayed inline in the browser's address bar search results.

Google on Tuesday announced the release of Chrome 91 to the stable channel. The latest update patches a total of 32 vulnerabilities.