Critical security flaw in Chrome discovered by Google's own AI

Google has released an urgent Chrome update for all major platforms, fixing a critical security vulnerability.

Google Chrome has been updated to version 139.0.7258.154/155 on Windows and Mac computers, and the update for Linux will roll out over the coming days and weeks.

Currently, Google restricts access to details about critical vulnerabilities that affect older Chrome versions until a majority of users patch their browsers.

“Use-after-free in ANGLE in Google Chrome prior to 139.0.7258.154 allowed a remote attacker to potentially exploit heap corruption via a crafted HTML page. Chromium security severity: Critical,” the description of the flaw reads.

ANGLE stands for "Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine,” an open-source, cross-platform graphics translation layer. Use-after-free is a bug where software tries to access parts of memory after it has already been freed, which can potentially cause crashes or even arbitrary code execution.

Google said that the critical flaw was discovered by its AI tool, Google Big Sleep, developed by DeepMind and Project Zero researchers. Just last year, this AI agent discovered the first flaw and foiled attackers' efforts to exploit it in the wild.

“Since it was introduced last year, it has continued to discover multiple flaws in widely-used software, exceeding our expectations and accelerating AI-powered vulnerability research,” Sandra Joyce, vice president at Google Threat Intelligence, said in July 2025.