Update Your Chrome Browser Now! Google Says These High-Severity Bugs Have Exploits in the Wild

A Google Chrome update is generally only hot news if it”s a major release packed with exciting new features. But Chrome 86.0.4240.198 is nonetheless a noteworthy update, because it quashes two high-severity flaws that allegedly have working exploits in the wild.

That”s right. Google this week updated the Stable Channel for desktop users with a new incrementation of its popular web browser to address two serious flaws.

Tracked as CVE-2020-16013 and CVE-2020-16017, the bugs are labeled as “high” in severity, meaning users ought to give priority to installing the patch.

If the CVE scoring isn”t persuasive enough, Google insists there are active exploits for these vulnerabilities out there. So every second your Chrome browser stays unpatched leaves a wider window of opportunity for malicious actors to use these known holes to compromise your privacy or security.

Chrome 86.0.4240.198 is available for Windows, Mac & Linux. Use your Chrome”s built-in updater from the About menu (in Settings) or download the updated binary anew from Google”s official Support page here.

While there are no reports of successful attacks exploiting these flaws (yet), you should patch up sooner rather than later. Every security update is important, especially when the vendor rates the fixes as high priority.