14 DAY TRIAL // Google’s developers have addressed a number of security issues in Chrome for those employing the stable version, and continued to carry out maintenance to the Dev branch by tweaking some of the browser’s key functions, like image display, printing, the password manager, and more.
Over at the Stable channel, Google Chrome has been promoted to version 5.0.375.99 for all supported platforms (Mac, Linux, and Windows). “This release fixes the following security issues,” Google’s staff states (bug IDs removed):
Low - OOB read with WebGL. Credit to Sergey Glazunov; Google Chrome Security Team (SkyLined). Medium - Isolate sandboxed iframes more strongly. Credit to sirdarckcat of Google Security Team. High - Memory corruption with invalid SVGs. Credit to Aki Hekin of OUSPG; wushi of team509. High - Memory corruption in bidi algorithm. Credit to wushi of team509. Low - Crash with invalid image. Credit to Jose A. Vazquez. High - Memory corruption with invalid PNG (libpng bug). Credit to Aki Helin of OUSPG. High - Memory corruption in CSS style rendering. Credit to wushi of team509. Low - Annoyance with print dialogs. Credit to Mats Ahlgren. Low - Crash with modal dialogs. Credit to Aki Helin of OUSPG.
As users would expect, the Dev channel (6.0.453.1) has Google’s Anthony Laforge noting some fine tuning, like these Windows-specific changes: Consolidated menu is on by default; Show preview images when dragging images; Printing from the built-in PDF plugin now prints vectors instead of pixels; Fix avutil-50.dll entry point not found error by limiting the DLL search path when loading FFMpeg binaries.
On the Mac front, Google is actively carrying out feature parity work, with no additional changes being mentioned for this Dev build.
The Linux installment, however, has been treated to some experimental support for gnome-keyring and kwallet for password storing. According to Laforge, the feature is currently off by default. Users can easily opt in, though, via a command line flag. Google’s devs say “we’d love feedback as to whether it eats your data,” and direct users to a thread for information on how to test it. Needless to point out, backing up those passwords is crucial, something Google’s development team doesn’t forget to note either. The PDF plugin is also now available for those working with Linux machines. To activate it, Chrome users must access about:plugins, Laforge notes. As usual, the svn log of all revisions hold more details about additional changes.