A new version of the browser landed in the stable channel

Mar 3, 2021 13:44 GMT  ·  By

Google has recently announced that Chrome 89 landed in the stable channel, and just as expected, it comes with several important improvements.

First and foremost, there are major security patches, with Google explaining that it addressed a number of 47 security vulnerabilities, some of them flagged with a high severity rating.

A heap buffer overflow in TabStrip reported by Khalil Zhani and described in CVE-2021-21159 earned the security researcher a bounty of $10,000, according to Google.

Chrome 89 now requires SSE3 processors, with Google itself claiming only a small number of devices are likely to be impacted, and comes with options to search open tabs.

At the same time, the browser now automatically defaults to HTTPS when the user doesn’t specifically point the browser to HTTP, and this is a change that makes sense given Google has been insisting on the security protocol for quite a while now.

First-party sets now in Chrome

In addition, Chrome 89 also introduces first-party sets, which is a new concept that’s supposed to link together websites belonging to the same owner.

Similar to the Firefox Enhanced Tracking Protection, the purpose of first-party set is to allow third-party resources for approved sites.

“Introduces a mechanism by which a set of registrable domains (a "First-Party Set") can declare themselves to be the same "party" or entity, such as web properties owned by the same company, or domains with different ccTLDs used by the same website. A First-Party Set applies to all HTTPS origins with a registrable domain that is the owner or a member element of the set. This proposal is for a simplified initial prototype,” Google explains.

The new version of Google Chrome is now available for download on Windows, Linux, and macOS, and users are recommended to install it as soon as possible given the aforementioned security patches.