Google team helps Apple, Microsoft fix zero-day bugs in browsers

Google researchers have discovered four zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome browser, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari that might have put users' data at risk.

After the vulnerabilities were disclosed by Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG), Apple, Microsoft and Google quickly patched those bugs.

Zero-day vulnerabilities are unknown software flaws. Until they're identified and fixed, they can be exploited by attackers.

"The four exploits were used as a part of three different campaigns. As is our policy, after discovering these zero-days, we quickly reported to the vendor and patches were released to users to protect them from these attacks," Google said in a statement.

"We assess three of these exploits were developed by the same commercial surveillance company that sold these capabilities to two different government-backed actors," the company informed.

In the first six months this year, there have been 33 zero-day exploits used in attacks that have been publicly disclosed this year — 11 more than the total number from 2020.

There is not a one-to-one relationship between the number of zero-days being used in-the-wild and the number of zero-days being detected and disclosed as in-the-wild.