Google has rolled out yet another update for Chrome users, this time taking the world’s most used web browser to version 151.0.7922.71/.72 for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android users. Although the latest update includes fixes for a total of 370 security issues, none of them are known to have been exploited in the wild. Far from being a problem with the Chrome browser or a reason why you should avoid it, this is actually a reasoned argument for the opposite. The increasing volume, both of security updates and vulnerabilities disclosed, is a good thing as far as your security is concerned. Far better that Google is made aware of these flaws before threat actors, and far better it rolls out fixes as soon as it can for all of them before they are used for malicious purposes.

Google Patches 370 Security Vulnerabilities, 4 Of Which Critical Use-After-Free Flaws

The latest update features seven critical vulnerabilities, all of which were discovered by Google itself, and four of these are of the familiar use-after-free memory type.

The four use-after-free vulnerabilities fixed by Google in this update were as follows:

  • CVE-2026-17650, which affected the Chrome smooth-scrolling and animation rendering Compositing component.
  • CVE-2026-17652, which affected Chrome’s Views C++ user interface toolkit.
  • CVE-2026-17653, which affected the Skia graphics library.
  • CVE-2026-17656, which affected the graphics and input-handling Ozone component.

The Open Worldwide Application Security Project describes a use-after-free as when a program accesses heap memory after it’s been freed, leading to unpredictable behavior or exploits. These errors can cause crashes or enable attackers to exploit memory vulnerabilities, risking data corruption or executing malicious code. The MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration explains that malicious data entered before chunk consolidation can exploit write-what-where primitives for arbitrary code execution, such as overwriting function pointers with shellcode. OWASP highlights that use-after-free situations can lead to dangerous exploits, especially when causing system crashes. Additionally, Chrome, primarily built on C++, often faces dangling memory pointers due to its complex, multi-process design and dynamic memory sharing, increasing the potential for such vulnerabilities. Not to mention the sheer size of the Chromium codebase that powers Chrome and other browsers, including Microsoft’s Edge, Opera and Brave.

More Google Updates For More Security VulnerabIlites Is A Good Thing—Here’s Why

The good news, as I’ve already indicated, is that Google itself, alongside the external security researchers that are part of its vulnerability rewards program, known colloquially as a bug bounty hunting platform, excels at uncovering these vulnerabilities at scale. This is potentially now aided by AI tooling that can assist in the vulnerability discovery process.

The better news is that users of Google Chrome, both consumer and enterprise, do not need to worry about how to prioritize the patching of these vulnerabilities, Whether it is a matter of a handful or a hundred is irrelevant. To bastardize Lord of the Rings: There is one update to patch them all.

And best yet, you don’t even need to do anything as Google updates the Chrome browser automatically. That said, Google does also note that the update rolls out over a period of days or even weeks. If you have already been asked to relaunch your browser, then the update has already landed for you. If not, you can use the three-dot Chrome menu to manually start the update search, download and installation process.