Google on Monday released an update to its Chrome browser, bringing the current version to 2.0.172.33. The update -- which Chrome users should have received automatically -- fixes a critical security issue and two other networking bugs, Google says.

Prior to the update, Chrome was vulnerable to a buffer overflow in certain responses from HTTP servers. When exploited, a hacker could not only crash the browser, but potentially run code with the privileges of the logged on user.

Far less dangerous are the pair of networking bugs squashed with the latest update. No longer will NTLM authentication to Squid proxies fail when trying to connect to HTTPS sites, and Chrome should no longer crash when loading some HTTPS sites.