Google Releases Chrome v153, Fixing 230 Security Flaws Across Platforms

Google has pushed a major Chrome browser update, Chrome v153, to users of mainstream operating systems worldwide. A security advisory disclosed that the update fixes a total of 230 security vulnerabilities and system defects, covering both desktop and mobile. The new version patches multiple low-level memory-safety flaws involving the Blink rendering engine, the V8 JavaScript virtual machine and the network communications stack, including use-after-free, integer overflow and out-of-bounds memory access.

Of the 230 flaws fixed, a considerable number were discovered and submitted by independent white-hat hackers and external security research teams through Google's Vulnerability Reward Program (VRP). Google paid out a total of hundreds of thousands of US dollars in bounties for high-severity vulnerability reports confirmed as eligible. Google's internal security teams and automated code fuzzing tools identified and eliminated deep memory defects in core components during code audits.

Chrome v153 also completes several advances in its underlying architecture and routine performance maintenance. The new version further strengthens resistance to malicious phishing sites and side-channel sniffing, optimizes the memory reclamation algorithm for background tabs in prolonged sleep states, and adds stability and compatibility adaptations for GPU drivers on different platforms along the hardware graphics acceleration pipeline, in order to reduce crashes and frame drops during high-load web page rendering.

Chrome v153 is being rolled out across the three major desktop operating system platforms, Windows, macOS and Linux, as well as the Android and iOS mobile platforms. Most desktop users' browsers will automatically check for and silently download the update in the background, and apply it automatically the next time the browser is restarted. The "About Google Chrome" page, located under the "Help" menu in the three-dot main menu at the top right of the browser, is used to manually trigger the check and update restart process.