Category: Chrome 61

A quick heads-up for readers who use Chrome OS.  You have a new update rolling out.  The new build is version 61.0.3163.123 (Platform version: 9765.85.0) and according to the release notes, will be rolling out to a majority of devices starting today.  As always, you can check for the update manually by typing chrome://help in the browser omnibar and tapping the “check for updates” button.

The update does not specifically call out any new features or fixes.  Rather, it is a bug fix and security update for the platform.  Over the past few months it has become common practice for Google to release a major update at the beginning of the month then one of these smaller, fix oriented updates around mid-month.

Chrome OS has come a long way in 6 years that it has been around.  The platform has infinitely more features and functionality, has a robust ecosystem of extensions and now Android apps, and is no longer a “cheap” OS for “cheap” hardware.  It has grown up, a lot.

But if there is one area that it still has lagged when comparing it to the likes of MacOS or Windows 10, it has been in the User Interface.  Yes it has changed a bit, most notably with the introduction of a task bar in 2012, but fundamentally it has always been a browser-based platform with a clunky but functional UI.  But that changed in a big way this week with the released of Chrome OS build 61.

Build 61 brings the most dramatic changes to the User Interface to date.  It brings an all new app launcher, significantly improved support for Android apps and a much more polished lock screen.  These many not sound like big ticket items but these changes bring the platform as a whole more into the mainstream look of an Operating System and out of the “geeks only” look that the platform has had to this point.  It also points to the never ending work that the Chromium team within Google perform to not only keep it as a secure and reliable OS but also bringing features that users are expecting in a desktop or laptop platform.  With more improvements on the horizon, this new look UI will only improve over the course of 2018.

Chrome build 61.0.3163.100 is now rolling out to desktop users of the browser on Windows, Mac and Linux.  The update is purely a security fix and performance update with no noted new features.

The update addresses three security issues in the browser, two of which were discovered as part of Google’s continuing bounty program.  Those fixes, including the reward given to the one who found it, is below.

• [$7500][765433] High CVE-2017-5121: Out-of-bounds access in V8. Reported by Jordan Rabet, Microsoft Offensive Security Research and Microsoft ChakraCore team on 2017-09-14
• [$3000][752423] High CVE-2017-5122: Out-of-bounds access in V8. Reported by Choongwoo Han of Naver Corporation on 2017-08-04

The other critical security issue found was found internally and no details were reported on it in the Release Notes.

Build 61.0.3163.98 of Chrome for Android has been released by the Chrome team at Google, bringing with it a handful of fixes and improvements.  The update is now in the Google Play Store and should roll out to devices via an OTA update over the course of the next few days.

The update, as is usually the case, brings a lot of under-the-hood updates to the browser as well as security fixes.  Most of these updates are focused on stability and performance of the app.  There are, however, other fixes that are specifically called out in the release notes.