What the Tech: Emergency Chrome update for users

Published: Mar. 31, 2022 at 5:59 PM EDT
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AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - There’s an important update for Google Chrome, and the company is urging you to update it right away.

It’s a major vulnerability that hackers are exploiting. All we know is this is an emergency update to the Chrome browser to plug a ‘zero-day’ vulnerability.

Zero-day means hackers are already exploiting it to install arbitrary code onto computers through the Chrome browser.

The bug also affects the Windows Edge browser, and Microsoft has issued a critical update for that as well.

Google doesn’t give specifics because it doesn’t want to tip off any hackers who haven’t already discovered the bug.

To update Chrome, tap the three dots in the top right of the browser window, click ‘help’ and ‘about’ to see if there’s an update available. You should see version 100.0.4896. If not, update it.

On the Windows Edge browser, click the three horizontal dots, ‘help and feedback’ and then ‘about Edge’ to check for updates. Do this on all your computers.

After a few weeks, when Google finds a large percentage of users have installed the updates, it’ll give details about the bug and what it allowed hackers to do. It isn’t often that Google issues a critical emergency update, so take this one seriously and install it.

Google says the Chrome update is for Windows, Linux, and Mac computers.

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