Chrome 15 brings redesigned New Tab page, closes holes

Google has released version 15 of Chrome into the WebKit-based browser's Stable Channel. The new version has a revamped New Tab page. According to the developers, the New Tab page has been redesigned to be "more streamlined", making it easier for users to access and manage their most visited sites and apps from the Chrome Web Store.

The stable channel update, labelled version 15.0.874.102, also closes a total of 28 security holes in the browser, 21 of which are rated as "high-risk" by Google. These vulnerabilities include multiple cross-origin policy violations and use-after-free errors, as well as out of bounds writes in the V8 JavaScript engine, a heap overflow bug and a URL bar spoofing issue. Other holes closed include 3 medium-risk bugs and 4 low-risk issues.

As part of its Chromium Security Reward programme, Google paid out a total of $26,511 to security researchers for reporting these vulnerabilities: $12,174 and $6,337 of which went to Sergey Glazunov and "miaubiz" respectively for the bugs they found. As usual, further details of the vulnerabilities are being withheld until "a majority of users are up-to-date with the fix".

More details about the stable branch release, including a short video and a full list of security fixes, can be found in the official release announcement and in a post on the Google Chrome Releases blog. Chrome 15.0.874.102 is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux from google.com/chrome. Users who currently have Chrome installed can use the built-in update function to ensure that they have the latest version.

(crve)