If you use Google Chrome to browse, you may encounter problems when trying to access certain web pages. It is due to a change they have made, with which they intend to improve security but which, at the same time, can generate these errors. Specifically, this appears after the latest Chrome 124 update. There are users who are reporting problems and we are going to tell you exactly what those errors consist of and how they would affect you.
Chrome has recently introduced a new quantum encryption mechanism, which on paper is capable of preventing quantum cryptographic attacks. Basically, extra encryption to enhance privacy and protect traffic when browsing. They had been testing this secure encryption mechanism for some time and it has now reached users through its latest stable version.
Problem with the latest Chrome security news
This novelty, which should clearly be positive by improving security, seems to be causing problems for certain users. It uses a quantum-resistant Kyber768 key for TLS 1.3 and QUIC connections. In this way, you protect traffic on HTTPS web pages when using Chrome. What it does is prevent an attacker from stealing data today, to decrypt it in the future through this method.
But what exactly is happening? According to some users, since version 124 arrived on desktop computers, some web applications, firewalls and servers have stopped working correctly when the connection is interrupted when using the ClientHello TLS protocol. It affects a wide variety of security devices and network equipment.
According to what they say, it appears that the TLS handshake is broken on servers that do not know how to handle the additional data when establishing the connection with the client. This same also affects the latest version of Microsoft Edge, which is based on Chromium and they have also applied this change.
It’s really not a problem with the browser, be it Chrome or Edge, but with the servers. That is, they are web servers that have not correctly implemented TLS and therefore cannot handle larger ClientHello messages well for post-quantum encryption. They automatically reject the connection.
Solve the problem
Have you seen that you have problems when accessing a website or server since the last Chrome update? You could avoid it in a simple way. To do this, you have to go to chrome://flags/#enable-tls13-kyber and there disable compatibility with Kyber hybrid 1.3. However, it is a temporary measure.
Hopefully this issue will be fixed in future versions of Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. As is often the case, sometimes there are errors when implementing an update and it can affect certain services. In this case, what should be a security improvement may cause some web pages or servers to not work.
From RedesZone, we recommend that you always keep your browsers correctly updated. This will be essential to achieve proper functioning, in addition to avoiding vulnerabilities that hackers can take advantage of to put your security at risk. For example, the antivirus could block the browser if there is a problem. You should apply it to any application.
