One of the most popular and widely used internet browsers has been found to be vulnerable. It is said that it only takes 16 string characters to crash the current tab or the entire Chrome browser.

Latvian Andris Atteka, a software engineer and an online security expert, disclosed in his personal blog that he discovered the crash bug using a combination of null characters and a URL string. In his post, Atteka used 26 characters (http://biom3d.com/%%30%30) that would snap Google Chrome.

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The said crash bug works in three ways: Typing the URL link on your Chrome browser and pressing enter, hitting the URL link, or even simply mousing over your pointer on the link. A message will then appear in your screen telling you that "something went wrong while displaying the webpage" and asking you to reload the page or open another one to continue using the browser.

To see if this bug works on your browser, visit Atteka's blog and point your cursor on the link he provided.

Atteka notified Google about the bug issue but the creator of Chrome insisted that this is not a security concern and should not cause panic. With such, Atteka did not receive any reward from discovering and reporting what Google says only a simple DOS vulnerabilty. However, this bug might still be easily used and would eventually become a concern to Chrome users if not properly resolved.

However, VentureBeat reported that it managed to formulate its shorter version of the 16-character string (http://a/%%30%30). It also said that the Chrome crash bug works both in Windows and Mac. Yet, on its conducted tests, such would not affect Chrome browsers installed on Android smartphones. Likewise, the team also has escalated the issue to Google and as of this writing, they still haven't received any response from the tech giant.

In the past, similar bugs were reported to cause instant interruption on Chrome browsers, same with Skype. However, these bugs have already been dealt with.

Tags16-Character Bug, Google Chrome, Andris Atteka, Atteka Blog, web browser crash