Recently Google introduced the launch of the Chrome 79 web browser in which, in addition to innovations and bug fixes, it is highlighted that the new version eliminated 51 vulnerabilities, many of which were identified as a result of automated tests with different tools.
Two issues are marked as critical, one of them CVE-2019-13725 allows access to a memory area already released in the code for Bluetooth support and CVE-2019-13726, heap overflow in password manager. The first vulnerability was discovered by researchers at Tencent Keen Security Lab and the second was found by Sergey Glazunov of Google Project Zero.
In addition to as part of the vulnerability detection cash reward program for the current release, Google paid 37 prizes for a value of $ 80,000, one of $ 20,000, another of $ 10,000, two of $ 7,500, four of $ 5,000, one of $ 3,000, two of $ 2,000, two of $ 1,000 and eight of $ 500.
Main news of Google Chrome 79
Of the main changes of this new version of Chrome 79 stands out the addition of a new technology to detect phishing in real time. Previously, verification was done by accessing browsing blacklists securely loaded locally, which they were updated approximately every 30 minutes, which was not enough, for example, under the conditions of frequent change of dominance by attackers.
The new method allows you to check URLs on the fly with a preliminary check of whitelists, which include hashes from thousands of popular sites that are trusted.
If the site being opened is not on the whitelist, the browser checks the URL on the Google server, passing the first 32 bits of the SHA-256 hash of the link from which possible personal data is cut off. According to Google, the new approach increases the efficiency of warning messages for new phishing sites by 30%.
Another novelty is the proactive protection against the transfer of Google credentials and passwords stored by the password manager through phishing pages. If you try to enter a password saved on a site where this password is generally not used, a warning about a potentially dangerous action for the user will be displayed.
For connections using TLS 1.0 and 1.1, an insecure connection indicator is now displayedto. Full support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 will be disabled in Chrome 81, scheduled for March 17, 2020.
On the other hand, another of the most important changes for this version of Google Chrome 79 is the ability to freeze inactive tabs, allowing you to automatically download from memory tabs that are in the background for more than 5 minutes and take no significant action. The inclusion of the function is controlled by the indicator «chrome: // flags / # proactive-tab-freeze«.
From the experimental novelties, highlights the Option to share clipboard content between desktop and mobile versions of Chrome.
On Chrome instances connected by one account, you can now access clipboard content from another device, even share the clipboard between desktop and mobile systems.
Clipboard content is encrypted using end-to-end encryption, which does not allow access to the text on Google's servers.
This function is enabled through the options chrome: // flags # shared-clipboard-receiver, chrome: // flags # shared-clipboard-ui, and chrome: // flags # sync-clipboard-service.
Experimental support for caching rendered content is also highlighted when switching pages with the forward and back buttons, which can significantly reduce delays in this type of navigation. The mode is enabled using the option «chrome: // flags # back-forward-cache«.
How to install Google Chrome 78 on Ubuntu and derivatives?
For those who are interested in being able to install the browser on their systems, they can do so by following the instructions that we share below.
For this we are going to go to the web page of the browser to obtain the deb package and to be able to install it in our system with the help of the package manager or from the terminal. The link is this.
Once the package is obtained, we only have to install with the following command:
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb