Google this week rolled out an update to address multiple high-severity vulnerabilities in Chrome and also announced that it is pausing upcoming releases of the browser.
The pause, the Internet giant says, was caused by an adjusted work schedule due to the current COVID-19 (coronavirus) epidemic, and affects both Chrome and Chrome OS releases.
“Our primary objectives are to ensure they continue to be stable, secure, and work reliably for anyone who depends on them. We’ll continue to prioritize any updates related to security, which will be included in Chrome 80,” the company announced.
A total of 13 security fixes were included in the latest Chrome update, including nine for vulnerabilities discovered by external security researchers.
The most important of these is a use-after-free in WebGL, tracked as CVE-2020-6422 and reported by David Manouchehri. Google paid an $8,500 bug bounty reward to the researcher.
Two other vulnerabilities were reported by Sergei Glazunov of Google Project Zero. Tracked as CVE-2020-6424 and CVE-2020-6425, the flaws represent a use-after-free in the media component and an insufficient policy enforcement issue in extensions.
Another Google Project Zero researcher, Natalie Silvanovich, found an out-of-bounds read bug in usersctplib, which is tracked as CVE-2019-20503.
Four of the remaining flaws were found by Man Yue Mo of the Semmle Security Research Team. All four are use-after-free bugs in the audio component, and they are tracked as CVE-2020-6427, CVE-2020-6428, CVE-2020-6429, and CVE-2020-6449.
The last vulnerability has been described by Google as an inappropriate implementation in V8. The security hole is tracked as CVE-2020-6426 and it was reported by Avihay Cohen of SeraphicAlgorithms.
Google has yet to reveal the amounts awarded for the last five vulnerabilities.
The new stable iteration of Chrome is available for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux as version 80.0.3987.149.
Related: Chrome 80 Released With 56 Security Fixes
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Related: Chrome Will Block Insecure Downloads on HTTPS Pages
