Risk of hacking: Google deploys an emergency update for its essential Chrome browser

The number of potentially affected users is staggering: more than 3 billion worldwide.

Google launched a security alert on Friday to warn Internet users who access the Internet through Chrome.

For the second time since the beginning of the year, the browser has suffered a "zero-day" security breach, that is to say an unknown vulnerability, the most critical and alarming on the scale of threats.

The risks speak for themselves: Google Chrome sits at the top of the most used browsers in France with 56% of the market, according to Statcounter.

Called "CVE-2022-1096", the vulnerability is according to engineers from the Mountain View giant "actively exploited in the wild" by malicious actors.

This implies in particular that information is exchanged between hackers on the DarkNet.

Security teams don't reveal more until they believe enough users have made the necessary update.

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“Attackers could use this flaw to remotely inject arbitrary code and deploy malicious software on the computer like ransomware,” warns Jérôme Soyer, technical director of the American cybersecurity company Varonis.

“This flaw can have a huge impact because part of the software used in Chrome is found in other professional applications or in other browsers”, underlines the expert.

Microsoft has since confirmed that its Edge browser, a good part of whose architecture is based on technical bricks of Chromium, is also affected by this flaw and is pushing for an update.

Here's how to protect yourself from a bad surprise, especially in these uncertain times in cyberspace.

Browser updates on Windows, Mac, or Linux are normally automatic upon launch.

But a passage through the Settings can remove the doubt: you have to click on the three small dots at the top right then Settings and check the version used on About Chrome.

The version must be at least 99.0.4844.82 and it will gradually give way to version 99.0.4844.84.

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For those using the default browser on their smartphone, an update should appear this week in the Play Store app stores and the App Store.