Google described the fixes for the flaws uncovered at the Pwnium competition as “hardening measures.” The company awarded $5,500 in bug bounties to researchers who helped in identifying and fixing the security gaps.
None of the flaws were rated as critical; six were rated as high priority, one as medium, and two as low. The high priority flaws included use-after-free with first-letter handling, libpng integer issue from upstream, use-after-free in CSS cross-fade handling, memory corruption in WebGL canvas handling, use-after-free in block splitting, and cross-origin violation with “magic iframe”.
Google also gave credit in this update for a low severity flaw that was patched previously: an extension web request API that can interfere with system requests, discovered by Michael Gundlach.
It seems Google’s effort to patch Chrome frequently has improved its popularity among web users. Chrome briefly overtook Internet Explorer as the most popular browser on Sunday, according to a report by the Telegraph newspaper, citing StatCounter information.
Chrome was used for 32.7% of all web browsing, while Internet Explorer had a 32.5%, according to StatCounter. When people returned to their offices on Monday, the Microsoft's share recovered to 35% and Chrome's share dropped to 30%.