Hack Alert! Google Sends Important Warning to 2 billion Chrome Users

Google Chrome users have been alerted over a major attack by hackers.

Chrome is the most popular browser worldwide with approximately 2.65 billion internet users up from 1.29 billion in 2014.

This dominance has caused it to be a major target for hackers. The company recently issued an upgrade warning to its users.

In a blog post, the company said two new ‘zero-day’ exploits CVE-2021-30632 and CVE-2021-30633 were discovered in Chrome for Linux, macOS and Windows and they came from anonymous tip-offs.

“Google is aware that exploits for CVE-2021-30632 and CVE-2021-30633 exist in the wild,” the company said.

According to Kapersky, zero-day exploit is the method hackers use to attack systems with a previously unidentified vulnerability. In the case of Chrome, it means that the hackers were able to exploit them before Google could release fixes for them.

Google said a stable channel has been updated to 93.0.4577.82 for Windows, Mac and Linux which will roll out over the coming days/weeks.

To combat these new threats, Chrome users can navigate to Settings > Help > About Google Chrome to check the version of their browser or update to the latest version available. If your browser version on Linux, macOS or Windows is listed as 93.0.4577.82 or above you are safe. It is important for users to always keep their browsers up-to-date.

What you should know

This is not the first time that Google’s Chrome is encountering zero-day threats. Earlier this year, the company issued updates after suffering a series of zero-day threats that stemmed from a bug in the V8 JavaScript engine used in the web browser. The company is actively fixing these vulnerabilities at a rapid rate.