14 DAY TRIAL // Google has bumped the version of its open-source browser all the way to 3.0.194.3. The release has been made available for download through the company's developer channel since the past week. However, only users of Mac and Linux will be able to take advantage of the update. As far as Windows users are concerned Google Chrome is stuck at version 3.0.193.1, namely the release offered earlier in July.
“Highlights in this release: Linux: Restarting should no longer lose all session information. Fix for crash when saving files. Fix a crash while dragging (and closing a tab). Linux: Fixes "fonts stop rendering after a few minutes." Linux: Fixes the "no pages load on 64-bit" issue,” revealed Jonathan Conradt, engineering program manager.
Also the past week, Google boosted the Beta and Stable versions of Google Chrome to version 2.0.172.37. The Mountain View-based search giant revealed that the release was designed to resolve minor bugs affecting functionality, among which: “Solving captcha images broken at orkut.com. Make forward/backward navigation work even when redirection is involved. Daylight savings time not recognized for some CET locales. Fix a browser crash on closing a URL request. Update the V8 Javascript engine to version 1.1.10.14 to fix issues with regular expressions. Update Gears to the latest release, 0.5.25.0,” Google revealed.
At the same time, the search giant also patched two security vulnerabilities with the 2.0.172.37 Beta and Stable channels updates. In this regard, the heap overflow with Javascript regular expressions flaw and the memory corruption in the browser process hole will no longer represent an issue for end users.
“Evaluating a specially-crafted regular expression in Javascript on a web page can lead to memory corruption and possibly a heap overflow. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to a renderer (tab) crash or arbitrary code execution in the Google Chrome sandbox,” reads Google's explanation for the heap overflow issue.
The memory corruption vulnerability is associated with aberrant behavior when it comes down to Chrome allocating memory buffers, triggered by a compromised renderer (tab) process. “This error could cause the browser process (and all tabs) to crash or possibly allow arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the logged on user. To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker would need to be able to run arbitrary code inside the renderer process,” Google noted.
The latest releases of Google Chrome are available for download here.