American multinational technology company, Google has asked Chrome users to update to a new version.
Investors King gathered that this announcement is following the confirmation of a software flaw that hackers are using to launch attacks on unsuspecting users.
Google, in an update announcement published on 14th February, noted that “Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2022-0609 exists in the wild.”
According to Google, the bugs are rated as a “high priority” vulnerability that could enable an attacker to run code on a targeted computer. Also, six additional vulnerabilities fixed in the update were marked as “high” priority, while one was marked as “medium”.
Google also noted that many of its security bugs are usually detected using AddressSanitizer, MemorySanitizer, UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer, Control Flow Integrity and libFu. The company, via its website, further stated that access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix.
While revealing that the update to Chrome version 98.0.4758.102 is free, Google assured that the update includes stability and performance improvements.
“The Stable channel has been updated to 98.0.4758.102 for Windows, Mac and Linux which will roll out over the coming days/weeks. Extended stable channel has also been updated to 98.0.4758.102 for Windows and Mac which will roll out over the coming days/weeks”, Google added.
According to The US Sun, Chrome users can update the version by following these steps:
- Open the Google Chrome browser and click the More icon (three vertical dots) in the top right.
- Click Update Google Chrome, or if that option isn’t there, it means you’re already using the latest version.
- Once you’ve updated, click Relaunch.
- The browser will save your open tabs and windows and re-open them when it restarts.
- You can also restart your browser later on by clicking Not Now.
- This will cause the update to be applied the next time you restart your browser.
- The More icon will be coloured (1) green if an update has been available for two days, (2) orange if an update has been available for four days, or (3) red if an update has been available for seven days.
Chrome, used by an estimated 3.2 billion users is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. It was later ported to Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android, where it is the default browser.
