Hot on the heels of 20 Chrome web browser vulnerabilities being fixed, and two emergency security updates in the space of just one week, Google has confirmed that more than 3 billion users of the world’s most popular browser must restart now. Here’s why, and what you have to do right now, as Google declares more security vulnerabilites.
Act Now — Update And Restart Google Chrome 142
Google has now confirmed that a number of new security vulnerabilities, including three that have been allocated a high-severity rating, have been identified in the market-leading browser. With five vulnerabilities in total, this may not be the largest such security update we’ve seen from Google in recent weeks. However, it still requires immediate action from Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android users. That action comes by way of restarting Chrome to ensure that the necessary updates are applied and activated.
The high-rated vulnerabilities in question are CVE-2025-12725, an out-of-bounds write issue in WebGPU, CVE-2025-12726, an inappropriate implementation in Views, and CVE-2025-12727, another inappropriate implementation, but this time impacting Chrome’s V8 JavaScript rendering engine.
Meanwhile, the two medium-rated security vulnerabilities impact the address and search bar feature, Omnibox, and both are inappropriate implementations once more, listed as CVE-2025-12728 and CVE-2025-12729.
The Google Chrome 142 security update, rolling out across the coming days and weeks, will take versions to 142.0.7444.134/.135 for Windows, 142.0.7444.135 for macOS,142.0.7444.134 for Linux, and 142.0.7444.138 for Android. The latter can be downloaded from the Google Play store.
“Access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix,” Google Chrome’s Srinivas Sista said. Talking of which, while these updates are automated, it is highly recommended that you kickstart the process even if your browser isn’t yet showing the restart-to-update flag. You can do this by heading for the settings menu and selecting About Google Chrome. It is vital to note that you must relaunch your Chrome browser as instructed; otherwise, the update will not be applied, and the security patch will not activate.
