Latest Chrome update patches 37 vunerabilities

Includes one flaw rated 'critical'

Google has updated its Chrome browser to patch 37 vulnerabilities, one of them classified as Critical.

Chrome 97.0.4692.71 contains "a number of fixes and improvements", Google says in a blog post.

The fixes include one classified as Critical and 11 rated High,

The Critical bug is tracked as CVE-2022-0096. It is a ‘use after free' vulnerability in the Storage component which could allow corruption of data and also the possible execution of malicious code.

Use after free (UAF) bugs allow an attacker to potentially make use of memory after a process has been finished, because that process has not properly cleared the memory on exiting.

Among the vulnerabilities classified as High are UAF bugs too, including vulnerabilities related to screen capture, autofill and PDF functionality.

Google restricts access to details of many bugs until they have been patched by a majority of users, and if they are found in a third-party library that other projects depend on.

Twenty-four of the 37 bugs were reported by security researchers from outside Google.

Chrome 97 has now been promoted to the stable channel for Windows, Mac and Linux and will roll out over the coming days and weeks.

This is the first update for Chrome in 2022. Unlike some updates last year, the current batch of patches are not for any urgent zero day flaws.

In June 2021, for example, the company was forced to rush out an urgent update for Chrome browser to address 14 security vulnerabilities, including a zero-day that was being actively being exploited by hackers.