It’s been less than two weeks, and we’re already talking about another critical Chrome update. To be honest, though, good on Google for staying on top of these things: Sometimes, we find out a company sat on critical security vulnerabilities for months without issuing a new update. At least here, we have a good chance to protect our Chrome use from would-be hackers.
Google announced the update in a blog post on Tuesday, April 26. This new version of Chrome is 101.0.4951.41, and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The update patches 30 security vulnerabilities, including seven rated as “high.” Five of those vulnerabilities (plus an additional six rated “medium”) are “Use after free” flaws, which, thanks to a memory relocation issue, can allow hackers to pass arbitrary code to a program.
Here are the seven “high” vulnerabilities. You can find a full list of the other 23 on Google’s Chrome Releases blog post:
- CVE-2022-1477: Use after free in Vulkan. Reported by SeongHwan Park (SeHwa) on 2022-04-06
- CVE-2022-1478: Use after free in SwiftShader. Reported by SeongHwan Park (SeHwa) on 2022-02-20
- CVE-2022-1479: Use after free in ANGLE. Reported by Jeonghoon Shin of Theori on 2022-03-10
- CVE-2022-1480: Use after free in Device API. Reported by @uwu7586 on 2022-03-17
- CVE-2022-1481: Use after free in Sharing. Reported by Weipeng Jiang (@Krace) and Guang Gong of 360 Vulnerability Research Institute on 2022-03-04
- CVE-2022-1482: Inappropriate implementation in WebGL. Reported by Christoph Diehl, Microsoft on 2022-03-10
- CVE-2022-1483: Heap buffer overflow in WebGPU. Reported by Mark Brand of Google Project Zero on 2022-04-08
These flaws affect Chrome and Chromium-based browsers. Notably, that includes Microsoft Edge, Brave, and Opera. If you use a Chromium browser, you’ll need to update the browser as soon as possible to protect your activity from these vulnerabilities.
How to update Google Chrome
Your browser might update automatically, but since Google is still rolling out this update, you’ll want to trigger it manually for the fastest results. To do so, click the three dots in the top-right corner of your browser window, then navigate to Help > About Google Chrome. Allow Chrome to look for a new update, then, when it’s available, click “Relaunch.”
When Chrome opens up again, you will be running the latest version.