Google Releases Chrome 79, Warns Users of Data Breach

Tech giant Google has issued warning of data leak for Indian and global users, after fixing Chrome 79 bug and re-issuing it later this week. Users were being sent notifications by the company via affected websites– through the means of pop-up alerts that started to appear on desktops, mobile phone screens and laptop screens; it forced users into reading the text which said that their passwords may have been exposed and hence they should change it immediately – "Change your password. A data breach on a site or app exposed your password. Chrome recommends changing your password for the site," the warning pop-up read.

As per sources, a bug affected data in select Android applications and Google had put on hold the release of Chrome 79. It was finally this week, Google's Chrome Releases blog confirmed the rollout of Chrome 79 for desktop and mobile platforms; Chrome 79 (79.0.3945.93) for Android comes with a fix for the WebView flaw and an assurance of improved defense against issues revolving around password protection of users.

According to the reports by media, the fix, "Resolves an issue in WebView where some users' app data was not visible within those apps. The app data was not lost and will be made visible in apps with this update."

WebView is a feature which is employed by various third-party applications to open a webpage, it ensures rendering of webpages within applications. However, here, Google Chrome is solely responsible for loading the content. PhoneGap and Twitter Lite are two apps that employ WebView functionality, as per AndroidPolice.

There have been various instances recorded in regard of the matter, nationally and globally, one such incident had a user trying to log into an e-commerce platform named 'Freshtohome' to shop fresh and chemical-free seafood as he received a pop-up warning him about the issue and advising to change his password.

In a similar manner, when one of India's media houses attempted to log into their portal, were faced with disruption and warnings began to pop-up onto the screen advising them the same.

In a public statement issued on Google threads, a Chromium engineer explains, "We are currently discussing the correct strategy for resolving this issue which will be one of: a) continue the migration, moving the missed files into their new locations. b) revert the change by moving migrated files to their old locations. We will let you know which of these two options have been chosen soon."

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