Google has presented the launch of the new version of your web browser Chrome 89 in which the new version eliminates 47 vulnerabilities. Many of the vulnerabilities were identified as a result of automated testing with AddressSanitizer, MemorySanitizer, LibFuzzer, and AFL.
At the same time, se note that one of the fixed vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-21166) related to the useful life of objects in the audio subsystem has the nature of a day 0 problem. For the current version, Google has paid out 33 prizes worth $ 61,000 under the vulnerability rewards program (two $ 10,000, two $ 7,500, three $ 5,000, two $ 3,000, four $ 1,000, and two $ 500).
Main novelties of Chrome 89
In this new version for a small percentage of users, site opening over HTTPS was implemented by default, Besides that support for profiles is included that allow different users to share their accounts when working with the same browser. For example, you can use profiles to provide access to family members or to separate sessions used for personal and work interests. The user can create a new Chrome profile and configure its activation when connecting to a specific account on Google, allowing different users to share bookmarks, settings and browsing history.
Another change that stands out from the new version of Chrome 89 is that the display of content thumbnails was enabled when hovering the mouse over the tabs on the top bar. Previously, previewing tab content was disabled by default and required changing settings.
In addition, for some users, the «Reading List» function is enabled, when activated, by clicking on the asterisk in the address bar, in addition to the button «Add bookmark», a second button appears "Add to Reading List" and the "Reading List" menu appear in the right corner of the bookmarks bar, listing all the pages previously added to the list. When you open a page in the list, it is marked as read. Pages in the list can also be manually marked as read and unread, or removed from the list.
Also se highlights that support for quick search of tabs was added, which previously required activation. The user can see a list of all open tabs and quickly filter the desired tab, regardless of whether it is in the current window or another.
For all users, processing of individual word input in the address bar has stopped such as attempts to open internal sites. Previously, in the case of entering a word in the address bar, the browser first tried to determine the presence of a host with this name in DNS, assuming that the user tried to open a subdomain, and only then redirected the request to the search engine. Therefore, the owner of the DNS server specified in the user preferences received information about one-word search queries, which was assessed as a privacy violation.
On x86 systems, the browser now requires the processor to support SSE3 instructions, They have been compatible with Intel processors since 2003 and AMD since 2005.
Additional APIs were added intended to provide functionality that can replace third-party cookies used to track user movements between sites in code for ad networks, social media widgets, and web analytics systems.
Also, we can also find that in the Android version it will now only run on devices certified by Play Protect. In virtual machines and emulators, Chrome for Android can be used if a valid device is emulated or if the emulator is developed by Google, check if the device is certified or not possible in the Google Play application in the Settings section. For non-certified devices, such as when using third-party firmware, users are required to register their devices to launch Chrome.
How to update or install Google Chrome in Ubuntu and derivatives?
For those who are interested in being able to update to the new version of the browser on their systems, they can do so by following the instructions that we share below.
The first thing you should do is check if the update is already available, for this you have to go to chrome: // settings / help and the notification that there is an update will appear.
In case it is not so you must close your browser and you are going to open a terminal and type:
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
You open your browser again and it must have already been updated or the update notification will appear.
In case you want to install the browser or choose to download the deb package to update, we must 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