Alert! 2 Billion Google Chrome Users Warned of a Big Threat; How to Stay Safe

More than 2 billion Google Chrome users were warned to update their browsers after a critical attack was discovered. This attack puts almost all Google Chrome users under threat of being hacked. Google itself has confirmed the hack in a blog post after a new zero-day exploit was found in Google Chrome. Previously we had issued a warning about a zero-day exploit called CVE-2021-30563 and now another has appeared and it is just as dangerous if not more. This is called CVE-2021-37973. On its blog, Google said: "Google is aware that there is an exploit for CVE-2021-37973 in the wild."

This is a zero-day exploit and what it refers to is the fact that cybercriminals were able to exploit it before Google knew about it and before it could release a patch for Google Chrome to stop them. Also, considering there are up to 2.65 billion Google Chrome users, the scale of the problem can be well imagined.

The understanding from the Google blog about the Google Chrome hack is that it was found by Google employees and not third parties. And most importantly, a Google Chrome update is essential for all users and the sooner they do it the better. Google also provided its perception of threat or classification of the exploit.

Google revealed the threat rankings on its blog:

High CVE-2021-37973: Use after free in Portals. Reported by Clement Lecigne from Google TAG, with technical assistance from Sergei Glazunov and Mark Brand from Google Project Zero on 2021-09-21."

It also shared a feel good part, "We would also like to thank all security researchers that worked with us during the development cycle to prevent security bugs from ever reaching the stable channel."

More importantly, Google has released a solution for 2 billion Google Chrome users.

How to check if your Google Chrome browser is protected:

• - Go to settings
• - Help
• - About Google Chrome
• - Check your version of Google Chrome
• - Those with Google Chrome version 94.0.4606.61 or more are safe
• - If you don't have this version, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it except wait.

Or else you can also turn off your machine.

In its note at the end of the blog, Google told users that it will keep the details a secret until everyone gets the update. It said, "Access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix. We will also retain restrictions if the bug exists in a third party library that other projects similarly depend on, but haven't yet fixed."

After doing the Google Chrome update, reboot the machine again so that everything is in order. Doing this is just as critical as the update itself.