Google has released Chrome 65 earlier today, and this new browser version comes with new APIs, the blocking of tab-under redirects, and 45 security fixes.

The new Chrome version number is now 65.0.3325.146. Chrome users can use the browser's built-in update mechanism to update to the new version, or they can download clean browser versions off Chrome's main page.

Chrome now blocks tab-under redirects

Of all the new features shipped with Chrome, probably the most important is a new security feature that now blocks tab-under redirects —when a web page opens links in new tabs and redirects the old tab to a new URL.

Tab-unders are used by malvertisers, but also by your regular advertisers as well, mainly because they bypass Chrome's built-in popup blocker and allow advertisers to open multiple tabs pushing unwanted products, services, or sites.

Work on this tab-under-blocking security mechanism started last year in October, as reported in a Bleeping Computer exclusive. Google confirmed the feature a month later, in November, when it announced it as part of a series of anti-malvertising protections.

The first of those features shipped last month, with Chrome 64, when Chrome started blocking iframe-based redirects. Today, Google shipped tab-under blocking, for which Chrome will show a notification like the one below.

Chrome's new tab-under blocker

New APIs

But besides a new security system, Google's Chrome team also added more web-dev APIs to Chrome's underbelly. The first of these is called the CSS Paint API, an API that allows developers to generate images via JavaScript inside CSS code.

The API is quite controversial, as some developers argued its results could also be achieved via SVG images, and that calling JS functions from CSS code would only add an extra layer of complexity to the tedious task of managing CSS stylesheets, especially on larger sites.

The second new API is called the Server Timing API, and this new tool is specifically aimed at programmers, as it adds a new weapon in their arsenal for measuring server and website performance.

Users interested in finding out what else was included with Chrome 65 can check this blog post from the Chromium team or Chrome 65's full changelog (slow-loading link). The security-related bugs fixed in Chrome 65 are detailed in a separate blog post, here. This month, the Chrome team fixed 45 security issues.

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