Google Issues Warning To 2 Billion Chrome Users

Google has fixed a security issue relating to Chrome and the internet giant wants two billion users to download the latest version of the web browser.

As noted by Forbes, the warning was initially picked up by security specialist Sophos and sees Google quietly reveal that Chrome has a critical security flaw across Windows, Mac and Linux, but the issue has been fixed. Still, Google isn't sharing any of the details of the issue besides its codename (CVE-2020-6457) and a brief description ("Use after free in speech recognizer"), which were uncovered via a blog post. If you do some extra digging, you'll find that the name has been marked as "Reserved" by the US government’s National Vulnerability Database.

"[I]n some cases, use-after-free bugs can allow an attacker to change the flow of control inside your program, including diverting the CPU to run untrusted code that the attacker just poked into memory from outside, thereby sidestepping any of the browser’s usual security checks or "are you sure" dialogs," Sophos explained of the issue. "That’s the most serious sort of exploit, known in the jargon as RCE, short for remote code execution, which means just what it says - that a crook can run code on your computer remotely, without warning, even if they’re on the other side of the world."

Chrome's newest update (81.0.4044.113) is currently rolling out for Windows, Mac and Linux right now. Click here for more information!

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