30-07-2025
Urgent Google Chrome Update Confirmed — Download And Restart Now
Update Chrome now - you have been warned.
A Google Chrome security update is, frankly, hardly breaking news these days. We see them announced week after week, but usually they address a bunch of vulnerabilities that external security researchers have disclosed, and occasionally even a zero-day that is already being exploited by attackers. Thankfully, the latter is not the case here, but it is unusual in that this emergency update addresses a single, high-severity vulnerability disclosed by an anonymous security researcher. If Google felt it was necessary to release an update under these circumstances, then it's imperative that you ensure your browser is updated and the security protections offered are activated as soon as possible. Here's what you need to know, and do.
Google Chrome Security Update 138.0.7204.183 Confirmed
In a July 29 posting by Google Chrome's Srinivas Sista, the latest security update for the world's most popular web browser was confirmed. The highly unusual notification featured just one security vulnerability that an anonymous researcher had disclosed, and as such, I would suggest it requires your immediate attention.
The high-severity CVE-2025-8292 vulnerability is of the use-after-free variety and impacts Chrome's media stream component. The anonymous researcher involved was awarded a bounty of $8,000 for responsibly disclosing the security flaw to Google.
Although Sista said that access to the vulnerability details 'may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix,' which is good policy, we do know that such use-after-free memory corruption issues can enable remote attackers, using malicious web pages, to execute arbitrary code including malware, as well as the exfiltration of data.
Which is why it is recommended that you don't wait the days or weeks it could take for this urgent security update to reach your browser, but instead kickstart the process yourself by simply heading to the Help|About Google Chrome option from your browser settings menu.
Update Chrome now.
This will take your browser to version 138.0.7204.183/.184 for Windows, Mac and 138.0.7204.183 for Linux. It is not, however, enough to protect you from the Chrome vulnerability that is being patched. To get that protection, you need to activate the update by restarting the browser. Your open tabs will be saved and reopened, so you don't need to worry about losing work.
Relaunch your browser to activate Chrome protection.
