Google will release weekly security updates for Chrome

Google plans to roll out updates regularly and quickly to Chrome web browser users to provide better security benefits. Today, the Mountain View company announced that it will release stable security updates (StableĐ for Chrome users on a weekly basis, starting with Chrome version 116 now available in the Early channel). Stable this week.

In a blog post, Google said that in the past, the company has maintained a policy of releasing a security update that alternates between major Chrome Stable releases (called "Stable Refresh"), according to the roadmap. program every four weeks. Like many popular browser platforms currently on the market, Google uses the open source Chromium code as the basis for Chrome. The company stated:

'Chromium's open nature offers many benefits in testing fixes and detecting bugs, but it also comes at a cost: Bad guys can take advantage of the visibility of these fixes and develop malicious exploits targeting unpatched browser users. This form of malicious attack is known as n-day mining.

That's why we believe it's really important to release security fixes periodically, as soon as possible, if we want to reduce the risk of n-day attacks for our users.

The move to release regular security updates on a weekly basis will allow Google to close the "gap between security patches" Chrome compared to the current release schedule, thereby reducing the risk of users being hacked. n-day:

'While the possibility of n-day exploits cannot be completely eliminated, the weekly Chrome security update cadence will allow for security fixes to be delivered 3.5 days earlier on average, greatly reducing attack time is inherently very small'.

Google said that if any security exploit in Chome is discovered in the wild, the company will quickly fix it and release an unscheduled patch to users. However, since new security updates are now rolling out on a weekly basis, Google hopes such instances of unscheduled updates will decrease as well.

David Pac

Update 09 August 2023