Google announced this week it will end Chrome support for older, 32-bit Linux distributions early next year and will maintain the browser on more popular distributions of the software.
Specifically Google plans to stop pushing updates and security fixes to those running Chrome on 32-bit Linux, Ubuntu Precise 12.04, and Debian 7. Most computers manufactured in the last 10 years come complete with 64-bit processors, so it’s likely the move has been in the works for some time.
Dirk Pranke, a software engineer with Google, explained the company’s plan in a post to Chromium’s dev mailing group on Monday, and confirmed support would end in early March 2016.
Pranke clarified that while Google is doing away with Chrome for 32-bit versions of Linux, it won’t entirely spurn the more avid Linux users who run it through their distribution’s software repositories. Pranke claims that Google still plans on supporting the Chromium source code – upon which Chrome is based – for 32-bit build configurations on Linux. Pranke is encouraging users who run the Precise version of Ubuntu to upgrade to the more up to date Trusty version.
The move is the latest by Google to bring Chrome up to date, ensuring it runs on a contemporary, secure platform.
In November, the company announced it would end Chrome support for Windows XP, Vista, Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8 in April 2016, because none are actively supported by Microsoft or Apple, and running the browser on any of the operating systems could make users more susceptible to viruses and malware.
Google also pushed out the latest stable version of Chrome this week, Chrome 47, addressing 41 security bugs.
The most pressing issue, a use-after-free bug in AppCache, was branded critical and net one anonymous security researcher $10,000.
The rest of the vulnerabilities are a collection of cross-origin bypass bugs, overflow bugs, and out of bounds access bugs:
- [$10000] [558589] Critical CVE-2015-6765: Use-after-free in AppCache. Credit to anonymous.
[$11337] [551044] High CVE-2015-6766: Use-after-free in AppCache. Credit to anonymous.
[$10000] [554908] High CVE-2015-6767: Use-after-free in AppCache. Credit to anonymous.
[$8000] [556724] High CVE-2015-6768: Cross-origin bypass in DOM. Credit to Mariusz Mlynski.
[$7500] [534923] High CVE-2015-6769: Cross-origin bypass in core. Credit to Mariusz Mlynski.
[$7500] [541206] High CVE-2015-6770: Cross-origin bypass in DOM. Credit to Mariusz Mlynski.
[$7500] [544991] High CVE-2015-6771: Out of bounds access in v8. Credit to anonymous.
[$7500] [546545] High CVE-2015-6772: Cross-origin bypass in DOM. Credit to Mariusz Mlynski.
[$7500] [554946] High CVE-2015-6764: Out of bounds access in v8. Credit to Guang Gong of Qihoo 360 via pwn2own.
[$5000] [491660] High CVE-2015-6773: Out of bounds access in Skia. Credit to cloudfuzzer.
[$5000] [549251] High CVE-2015-6774: Use-after-free in Extensions. Credit to anonymous.
[$3500] [529012] High CVE-2015-6775: Type confusion in PDFium. Credit to Atte Kettunen of OUSPG.
[$3000] [457480] High CVE-2015-6776: Out of bounds access in PDFium. Credit to Hanno Böck.
[$3000] [544020] High CVE-2015-6777: Use-after-free in DOM. Credit to Long Liu of Qihoo 360Vulcan Team.
[$2000] [514891] Medium CVE-2015-6778: Out of bounds access in PDFium. Credit to Karl Skomski.
[$2000] [528505] Medium CVE-2015-6779: Scheme bypass in PDFium. Credit to Til Jasper Ullrich.
[$1000] [490492] Medium CVE-2015-6780: Use-after-free in Infobars. Credit to Khalil Zhani.
[$1000] [497302] Medium CVE-2015-6781: Integer overflow in Sfntly. Credit to miaubiz.
[$1000] [536652] Medium CVE-2015-6782: Content spoofing in Omnibox. Credit to Luan Herrera.
[$1000] [537205] Medium CVE-2015-6783: Signature validation issue in Android Crazy Linker. Credit to Michal Bednarski.
[$500] [503217] Low CVE-2015-6784: Escaping issue in saved pages. Credit to Inti De Ceukelaire.
[$500] [534542] Low CVE-2015-6785: Wildcard matching issue in CSP. Credit to Michael Ficarra / Shape Security.
[$500] [534570] Low CVE-2015-6786: Scheme bypass in CSP. Credit to Michael Ficarra / Shape Security.
