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Google released an emergency security update for the Chrome browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and all users are urged to install the update immediately.
As Bleeping Computer reports, the patch actually contains seven security fixes, but the most important one is CVE-2023-6345, which relates to an integer overflow problem in the Skia 2D graphics library used in Chrome, ChromeOS, Android, and Flutter among many other pieces of software.
Security researchers Benoît Sevens and Clément Lecigne, who form part of the Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG), discovered and reported the vulnerability on Nov. 24. Google acknowledged in its Chrome Releases support post that the vulnerability is already being exploited, hence the need for the emergency patch.
Manually updating Chrome is really easy to do. Simply follow these steps:
- Open Chrome
- Click More (three vertical dots)
- Click Help > About Google Chrome
- Click Relaunch
If your version is already up-to-date, the About Google Chrome page will tell you and a relaunch of the browser won't be required.
Without the patch installed, your browser is vulnerable attack, which could range from it simply crashing to a hacker managing to execute arbitrary code on your system. Chrome users should be used to this in 2023 as we're now up to six zero-day vulnerabilities this year.