Security News

Google has patched a second actively exploited zero-day flaw in the Chrome browser in two weeks, along with addressing nine other security vulnerabilities in its latest update. The zero-day flaw, tracked as CVE-2020-16009, was reported by Clement Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group and Samuel Groß of Google Project Zero on October 29.

Google today released Chrome 86.0.4240.183 for Windows, Mac, and Linux to address 10 security vulnerabilities including a remote code execution zero-day exploited in the wild. Today, Google patched another zero-day in Chrome for Android exploited in the wild, a sandbox escape vulnerability tracked as CVE-2020-16010.

NetMarketShare announced on Sunday plans to shut down its public browser share reporting tool, which has been available for more than 14 years. According to Net Applications, the data provided by NetMarketShare is a primary source in "Tens of thousands of articles and publication".

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it's working on Vertical tabs and Smart copy features for the Edge browser. Today, Microsoft is rolling out the new Vertical Tabs feature to users in the Dev and Canary channels.

This week: the DOJ's attempt to reignite the Battle to Break Encryption; the story of the Russian hackers behind the Sandworm Team; a zero-day bug just patched in Chrome; and why your vocabulary needs the word "Restore" even more than it needs "Backup". WHERE TO FIND THE PODCAST ONLINE. You can listen to us on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Overcast and anywhere that good podcasts are found.

Google has stepped up its effort against websites that have a history of sending abusive notification content, by blocking notification permission requests in Chrome 86. This is the latest step Google has taken in this direction, after the introduction of the quiet notification permission UI in Chrome 80 and the automatic enrollment in the quiet notification UI for websites that display abusive notification permission requests starting with Chrome 84.

Google has added a new feature to Chrome 86 that aims to stomp out abusive notification content. Google first implemented controls that went against abusive notifications with Chrome 80, when it introduced a "Quiet notification permission UI" feature.

A trip to the About Chrome or About Chromium dialog should give the version identifier 86.0.4240.111. If you're in the habit of rarely shutting down your computer, or even of rarely exiting from your browser, now would be a good "Rare moment" to give Chrome a chance to ingest the update.

Starting with Chrome 86, Google is automatically hiding website notification spam on sites showing a pattern of sending abusive notification content to visitors. "Our goal with these changes is to improve the experience for Chrome users and to reduce the incentive for abusive sites to misuse the web notifications feature."

Google released an update to its Chrome browser that patches a zero-day vulnerability in the software's FreeType font rendering library that was actively being exploited in the wild. Security researcher Sergei Glazunov of Google Project Zero discovered the bug which is classified as a type of memory-corruption flaw called a heap buffer overflow in FreeType.