Google's Chrome most vulnerable browser; 303 flaws reported in 2022

(Image Courtesy: Google)

Google Chrome might be the most popular browser in the world, but it's also the most unsafe.

A report published by Atlas VPN reveals that 303 vulnerabilities were discovered for Chrome in just 2022 alone. To date, this brings the total number of vulnerabilities discovered for Chrome to 3,159.

In second place is Mozilla's Firefox with 117 vulnerabilities recorded in 2022, and a total of 2,361 vulnerabilities found since launch.

Third is Microsoft's Edge browser. What is interesting is that Edge only has 806 vulnerabilities discovered since launch but 103 of those were reported in 2022. According to the report, the number is 61 percent higher than in 2021, which is curious.

Apple's Safari is fourth on the list with only 26 vulnerabilities discovered in 2022, and a total of 1,139 security flaws overall. Safari is also the second most popular browser in the world with more than a billion users worldwide.

Opera was the safest browser in 2022 with no vulnerabilities found in the year, and a total of just 344 vulnerabilities discovered since launch.

Another thing to note is that Chrome, Edge and Opera are all built on the same Chromium engine, which means base vulnerabilities may affect all of them.

So what does this mean? Should you stop using Chrome? Here's where it gets a little tricky. To be fair to Google, it has the most transparent vulnerability reporting process out of all the companies. It is also the world's most popular browser, which means it is naturally going to have a lot of eyes on it. Google has also fixed these vulnerabilities.

The reporting process of these flaws also differs from company to company, with some withholding disclosures for various reasons.

Since this data was extrapolated using vulnerabilities reported directly to the VulDB database, it is also possible some might not get reported at all. It's best to take this data as a general idea and not fact.