Apologies in advance for not being super knowledgeable with WP. I manage content on a company WP site but we contract the development work to a WP shop.
We noticed today that our internal links, which were previously set to redirect in the same browser window, are now set to open in a new tab. Our development team said this isn't a result of their code but rather the site automatically updating to 6.6.1. a few days ago.
Anyone else experiencing anything similar with link settings getting updated randomly?
These links number in the thousands so finding and fixing them manually is not a great option. Any ideas for a mass update?

I’m sure that it will never happen due to a WordPress update.
May be, there are some new JS or PHP code added for any specific functionality.
There are plugins that would implement this feature on all (or a set of) your links. Did they possibly install one?