By Arica Chhay, Jay Krous
Web browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are essential for everyday work, research, and personal activities. The ubiquitous reliance on web browsers to access online resources makes them an attractive target for cyber criminals. Outdated browsers expose your computer, devices, and the Berkeley Lab network to security breaches and malicious attacks. The #1 safety tip from the Cyber Security team is to regularly maintain the latest version of your software and applications. Web browser updates offer new features and performance enhancements in addition to critical security patches to protect your computer from known vulnerabilities.
A Recent Discovery
A significant vulnerability, CVE-2023-4863, was reported in September 2023 and targets image compression technology broadly used across the internet. Attackers can use graphics embedded with malicious data to exploit the optimization tool in order to execute code remotely and gain unauthorized permissions to access your computer. Such images may be transmitted to a user via a website, email client, or chat app. This particular vulnerability impacts Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers for Windows, macOS, and Linux, in addition to any apps and packages which use the compression technology.
How to Update Chrome and Firefox
Browsers like Chrome and Firefox have automatic updates enabled by default. Updates normally happen in background processes when the browser application is opened and closed. Manual updates might be required if a browser hasn’t been closed in a while. Once the download is finished, restart the browser to complete the installation process and apply updates.
- Chrome: Check for updates to Chrome.
- Firefox: Update Firefox to the latest release.
For more information and helpful tips, read Safer Web Browsing and check out other Cyber Security articles.