GOOGLE released Chrome 156 to the stable channel on 20 October 2026, fixing 353 security issues. The update includes six vulnerabilities described in the article as critical, affecting Skia, Accessibility, CSS, Paint and WebRTC. Most involve memory corruption; one, CVE-2026-113271, is a use-after-free flaw. Such bugs could allow a malicious webpage to crash the browser or run code within it, although Google has not published technical details and says reports will remain restricted until most users have updated.
Google has not flagged any of the flaws as exploited in the wild, and the article says none appear in CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue. It reports that researchers and AI tools helped identify some issues, including CVE-2026-113271, credited to Xinyang Ge of Anthropic with Claude’s assistance, and the WebRTC flaw CVE-2026-113303, reported by OpenAI Codex Security. The article also lists 61 high-severity issues across components including V8, ANGLE, WebGL and PDF.
The update applies to Chrome desktop on Windows, Mac and Linux. Versions earlier than 156.0.8078.47 are affected. Google’s recommended fixed versions are 156.0.8078.47 or .48 on Windows and Mac, and 156.0.8078.47 on Linux. Users can check for the update through Settings, then About Chrome, and relaunch the browser. The release is rolling out over days or weeks; users of other Chromium-based browsers should look for corresponding updates from their vendors.