Millions of Google users have been urged to update now after a 'critical bug' remained undetected

RESEARCHERS have discovered a dangerous zero-day vulnerability in Google Chrome.

“Zero-days” are bugs that have not yet been fixed by software developers.

Researchers have discovered a dangerous vulnerability in Google ChromeCredit: Getty

This means they can be fully exploited by hackers and cybercriminals.

In particular, attackers can exploit these to gain access to sensitive data, crash browsers, install malware, and more.

They often arise from unknown problems and are dangerous until programmers can solve the problem.

Once a fix patch is written and deployed, the exploit is no longer called a zero-day exploit.

THE CHROME ERROR

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-0519, is classified as a high severity bug.

It causes an “out of bounds memory access” issue in Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine.

The vulnerability was already being actively exploited before Google patched it.

Google promptly released an update for Chrome after discovering the zero-day.

The update is version 120.0.6099.224/225 for Windows and 120.0.6099.234 for Mac.

To protect yourself from the zero-day vulnerability, update your Chrome browser immediately,

First, go to your device and open the Chrome browser.

Click the three-dot menu icon at the top right, then tap Settings.

On the left, click About Chrome. Here Chrome checks for updates and downloads them automatically.

If and when an update is ready, click 'Restart to Update' to apply it.

There are a few things you can do to protect your device from malware and vulnerabilities.

To start, only install apps from the Google Play Store. This helps ensure that the apps you download are safe.

Be careful when clicking links in emails or text messages, as they often lead to phishing websites.

It helps a lot to use a security app with malware protection on your device