Google has released an emergency update for Chrome, fixing a vulnerability in new Chrome versions 138.0.7204.96/97 for Windows, 138.0.7204.92/93 for macOS, and 138.0.7204.96 for Linux. According to Google, this particular vulnerability is already being attacked in the wild. The manufacturers of other Chromium-based browsers should be following suit in the coming days.
In the Chrome Releases blog post, Krishna Govind provided the scant details that Google revealed about the zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2025-6554), which Google classifies as high risk. It’s a classic issue that crops up practically every month: a type mix-up in the V8 JavaScript engine. The discoverer of the vulnerability is also no stranger: Clément Lecigne from Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG), who has discovered zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome several times before.
Lecigne discovered the problem on June 25th. Then, on June 26th, Google sent a configuration change to all Chrome installations on the Stable Channel of all platforms to mitigate the problem. The update now available should take care of the rest. A week ago, Google released the new major version of Chrome 138, which addressed 11 security flaws.
As a rule, Chrome updates itself automatically when a new version is available. You can manually initiate the update check using the menu and navigating to Help > About Google Chrome. Google also released Chrome for Android 138.0.7204.63 and Chrome for iOS 138.0.7204.119, with the same vulnerabilities fixed in the Android version.
Google plans to release Chrome 139 at the end of July.
Other Chromium-based browsers
The manufacturers of other Chromium-based browsers should now be working to follow suit with their own updates.
Microsoft Edge and Brave have already made the switch to Chromium 138 and are at the security level prior to this Chrome update. Vivaldi is still working on finalizing its new version 7.5 with Chromium 138. Although Opera is delivering an update to version 119.0.5497.141, it still only contains the completely outdated Chromium 134.
This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and localized from German.
