Massive New Security Update For 3.2 Billion Google Chrome Users


April 29 Update below. This post was originally published on April 27

It’s been a breathtakingly busy few weeks in the world of Google Chrome security and the pace doesn’t appear to be slowing down. Hot on the heels of two emergency fixes for in-the-wild exploits, and confirmation of a record number of Chromium zero-days across 2021, comes another truly massive security update for billions of Chrome users. How massive would that be? Well, newly confirmed stable channel update for desktop which takes Google Chrome to version 101.0.4951.41 for Windows, Mac and Linux users fixes no less than 30 security vulnerabilities.

MORE FROM FORBESEmergency Security Update For 3.2 Billion Google Chrome Users-Attacks Underway

No Google Chrome zero-days is no reason for user update complacency

Thankfully, for now at least, none of these are zero-days where attackers are known to already be exploiting the vulnerabilities. However, that doesn’t mean that user complacency should be the order of the day. As always, I recommend you kick-start the Chrome 101 security update as soon as possible rather than wait for it to be rolled out to you in the coming days and weeks. And, importantly, ensure that it is properly activated whether you update now or choose to wait.

Update April 29: Because Chrome isn’t the only web browser client to employ the Chromium engine under the hood, as it were, users of those browsers should also be on the look out for security updates. I can confirm that at the time of writing my copies of both Brave and Microsoft Edge have now been updated to include the latest Chromium 101.0.4951.41 version as you can see from the screenshots below. It’s just as important that you make sure that these browsers have updated to apply the necessary security patches and that means restarting them as you would with Google Chrome itself.

As far as Brave users are concerned, you need to head for the three stripe ‘burger’ menu and select the ‘About Brave’ option. Again, this will then force the browser into immediately checking if an update is available and downloading it if that is, indeed, the case. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, don’t forget to restart the…

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