The recent Pwn2Own contest revealed security vulnerabilities in several software products, including Google Chrome.
Within hours, Google corrected the flaws in Chrome and released new versions. The new Windows version is 33.0.1750.154. The official announcement provides additional details.
Version 33.0.1750.117 of Google’s web browser contains a whopping 28 fixes for security vulnerabilities. Anyone using Chrome should make sure that it has updated itself to the new version.
A new version of Chrome fixes eleven security issues and adds some enhancements, including indicators that tell you which tab is generating audio, better blocking of malware files, and stability and performance improvements. The version of Flash embedded in Chrome was updated to the latest version (12.0.0.41) as well.
Hot on the heels of version 31.0.1650.48, the latest version of Google’s web browser fixes multiple memory corruption issues as demonstrated by an exploit privately reported to Google.
The latest version of Google’s web browser includes an update to the embedded Flash player (to version 11.9.900.152), and 25 security fixes. The official announcement has the technical details.
I suppose I shouldn’t be too upset about this, at least not like this guy. I wasn’t actually using Google Talk, but of all the chat clients I’ve evaluated, it was one of the best. Recently I’ve been using Skype for chat, and it works reasonably well. Everyone already runs it, which helps.
But I’m still surprised that Google snuck this one past me. I only discovered it when I allowed Secunia’s PSI (software that checks for missing updates) to update Google Talk. PSI claimed there was a newer version than the one I was running, so I told it to download and install the update. When it was finally finished, I was running Google Talk version zero: it had been removed completely from my computer. So I started looking into it, and discovered that Google eliminated Talk some time in May 2013. Google will tell you that what replaced it (Google+ Hangouts) is much better, but that’s complete crap.
Google has got to be hurting itself by eliminating all these services. Most serious professionals (including me) are now wary of using any free service offered by Google.