A recent security update for Google Chrome has addressed a significant vulnerability that exposed users’ browsing history to websites, including those set up by malicious actors.
Security Flaw in Google Chrome Exposed Browsing History
Google Chrome was found to have a security flaw that had been present for over 20 years, potentially compromising users’ privacy by exposing their browsing history.
Google Engineer Kyra Seevers detailed the issue in a blog post, explaining how the flaw allowed previously visited links to be tracked across different websites.
The flaw exploited the CSS :visited selector, which changed the color of visited links from blue to purple. This design feature, while seemingly harmless, could be exploited by attackers to track users’ browsing activity.
Google’s Solution – Link Partitioning
To address this vulnerability, Google introduced :visited link partitioning in the latest Chrome release. This feature prevents the styling of visited URLs on unrelated websites, only applying it to sites where the user clicked on a specific link.
According to Seevers, this partitioning stores additional information about visited links, making it harder for websites to track users’ browsing history.
Users can experience this new feature in Google Chrome 136, with the option to enable it through chrome://flags by searching for “#partition-visited-link-database-with-self-links”.
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